avens had opened. Once more the
unattainable had appeared to him wrapped in the myriad-coloured veil of
his young illusions.

"Molly," he said almost in spite of himself, "what would have happened
to us if we had met five or six years ago?"

"Nothing, probably."

"Well, I'm not so sure--not if you like me half as well as I like you.
You understand, don't you, that I got myself tied up--entangled before
I knew you--but, by Jove, if I were free I'd make you think twice about
me."

"There's no use talking about what might have been, is there?"

The hint of his "entanglement," she had accepted quite simply as a
veiled allusion to an incident in his life abroad. Her interest in it
would have been keener had she been less indifferent to him as a lover,
but while she walked by his side, smiling in response to his words, she
was thinking breathlessly, like one hushed in suspense, "If Abel had
only been like that a year ago, I should not have left him." That the
qualities she had always missed in the miller had developed only through
the loss of her, she refused to admit. A swift, an almost miraculous
change had passed over her, and all the warm blood in her body seemed
to rush back to her heart, giving it the abundance of life. The world
appeared to her in a clearer and fresher light, as though a perpetual
dawn were hanging above it; and this light shone into the secret
chambers of her mind as well as over the meadows and into the shadowy
places of the Haunt's Walk. "Yes, if he had been like that I should
never have left him and all this would not have happened," she thought
again; "and if I had been like this would he ever have quarrelled with
me?" she asked herself the instant afterwards.

And Gay, walking at her side, but separated by a mental universe, was
thinking resentfully, "The deuce of it is that it might just as well
never have happened! If I'd only been a little less of a fool--If I'd
only not walked my horse across the pasture that October afternoon--If
I'd only had sense enough to see what was coming--If I'd only--oh, hang
it!"

"I'd be a better man to-day if I'd known you sooner, Molly," he said
presently. "A man couldn't tire of you because you're never the same
thing two days in succession."

"Doesn't a man tire of change?"

"I don't--it's the most blessed thing in life. I wonder why you've given
up flirting?"

"Perhaps because there isn't anybody to flirt with."

"I like that. Am I not continual