s the thing that life was meant to teach them both
at the end. If Abel's energy was now less effervescent, she realized
instinctively that it had become more assured. Life or marriage--or,
perhaps, both together had "tamed" him, as Reuben had prophesied, and
the rough edges of his character had worn smooth in the process.

A butterfly, marked gorgeously in blue and orange, alighted on the bar
by her hand, and when it fluttered off again, drunken with summer, her
gaze followed it into the meadow, where the music of innumerable bees
filled the sunshine.

"And you, Abel?" she asked, turning presently, "what of yourself?"

He smiled at her before answering; and with the smile, she felt again
the old physical joy in his presence--in his splendid animal vitality,
in the red-brown colour of his flesh, in the glow of his dark eyes,
which smiled down into hers. No other man had ever made this appeal to
her senses. She had struggled sometimes like a bird in a net against the
memory of it, yet it had held her, in spite of her will, even when she
was farthest away from him. The gentleness from which Judy revolted,
brought Molly's heart back to him with a longing to comfort.

"Well, I'm learning," he answered, still smiling.

"And you are happy?"

He made a gesture of assent, while he looked over her head at the
butterfly--which had found its mate and was soaring heavenward in a
flight of ecstasy. The same loyalty which had prevented his touching her
hand when they met, rebelled now against an implied reflection on Judy.

"I am glad," she said, "you deserve it."

She had given her eyes to him almost unconsciously, and their look was
like a cord which drew them slowly to each other. His pulses hammered
in his ears, yet he heard around him still the mellow murmuring of bees,
and saw the butterflies whirling deliriously together. All the forces
which had held him under restraint stretched suddenly, while he met her
eyes, like bands that were breaking. Before the solitary primal fact
of his love for her, the fog of tradition with which civilization
has enveloped the simple relation of man and woman, evaporated in the
sunlight. The harsh outlines of the future were veiled, and he saw only
the present, crowned, radiant, and sweet to the senses as the garlands
of wild grape around which the golden bees hung in a cloud. For an
instant only the vision held him; then the rush of desire faded
slowly, and some unconquerable instinct, of