This was what she wanted to say, but instead of uttering it, she merely
murmured:

"I can't, Jonathan, you would never understand." Her whole being was
vibrant to-night with the desire for love, yet, in spite of his wide
experience with the passion, she knew that he would not comprehend what
she meant by the word. It wasn't his kind of love in the least that she
wanted; it differed from his as the light of the sun differs from the
blaze of a prairie fire. "It's just a feeling," she added, helplessly.
"You don't have feelings, I suppose?"

"Don't I?" he echoed. "Oh, Molly, if you only knew how many!"

"While they last--but they don't last, you know, they have their
seasons. That's the curse of them, or the charm. If they only lasted
earth would be paradise or hell, wouldn't it?"

But generalizations had no further attraction for her. Her mind was one
great wonder, and she felt that she could hardly keep alive until she
could stand face to face with Abel and read the truth in his eyes.

"All the same I want to go," she repeated obstinately.

Suspicion seized him, and his mouth grew a little hard under his short
moustache.

"Molly," he asked, "have you been thinking again about the miller?"

"How absurd! What put that into your head?" she retorted indignantly.

The idea, innocent as it was, appeared to incense her. What a little
firebrand she looked, and how hot her eyes glowed when she was angry!

"Well, I'm glad you haven't--because, you know, really it wouldn't do,"
he answered.

"What wouldn't do?"

"Your marrying a Revercomb--it wouldn't do in the least."

"Why wouldn't it?"

"You can see that for yourself, can't you? You've come entirely out of
that life and you couldn't go back to it."

"I don't see why I couldn't if I wanted to?" she threw out at him with
sudden violence.

Clearly, as his mother had said, she was lacking in reverence, yet he
couldn't agree that she would never become exactly a lady. Not with that
high-bred poise of the head and those small, exquisite hands!

"Well, in the first place, I don't believe you'd ever want to," he
said calmly, "and in the second place, if you ever did such a thing, my
little weather-vane, you'd regret it in ten minutes."

"If I did it, I don't believe I'd ever regret it," was her amazing
rejoinder.

Stupefied yet dauntless, he returned to the charge.

"You're talking sheer nonsense, you silly girl, and you know it," he
said. "If you were to go