which he had been almost
unconscious, asserted its supremacy in his brain. The ghosts of dead
ancestors who had adhered to law at the cost of happiness; the iron
skeleton of an outgrown and yet indelibly implanted creed; the tenacity
of the racial structure against which his individual impulses had
rebelled--these things, or one of these things, proved in the end
stronger than the appeal of his passion. He longed with all his strength
to hold her in his arms--every nerve in his body ached for her--yet he
knew that because of this unconquerable instinct he was powerless to
follow his longing.

"I don't think I deserve much, Molly," he said quietly.

She hesitated still, looking away from him in the direction of her path,
which led over the meadow.

"Abel, be good to Judy," she said, without turning.

"I will, Molly, I promise you."

He moved a step toward the turnpike, stopped, and looked back.

"I can't do much for you, Molly," he said, "but if you ever need anybody
to die for you, remember I'm ready."

"I'll remember," she answered, with a smile, but her eyes were misty
when she passed the blazed pine and turned into the little path.

CHAPTER X

TANGLED THREADS

In front of Molly, the path, deep in silvery orchard grass, wound
through the pasture to the witch-hazel thicket at Jordan's Journey; and
when she entered the shelter of the trees, Gay came, whistling, toward
her from the direction of the Poplar Spring. He walked rapidly, and
his face wore an anxious and harassed expression, for he was making the
unpleasant discovery that even stolen sweets may become cloying to a
surfeited palate. His passion had run its inevitable course of desire,
fulfilment, and exhaustion. So closely had it followed the changing
seasons, that it seemed, in a larger and more impersonal aspect, as much
a product of the soil as did the flame-coloured lilies that bloomed
in the Haunt's Walk. The summer had returned, and a hardier growth had
sprung up from the ground enriched by the decay of the autumn. He was
conscious of a distinct relief because the torment of his earlier love
for Blossom was over. There was no regret in his mind for the poignant
sweetness of the days before he had married her--for the restlessness,
the expectancy, the hushed waitings, the enervating suspense--nor even
for those brief hours of fulfilment, when that same haunting suspense
had seemed to add the sharpest edge to his enjoyment. He did not su