r voice had softened.

"Jonathan, it's no use thinking of me--go back to Blossom," she said.

"Not thinking of you won't make me go back to Blossom. When that sort of
thing is over, it is over once for all."

"Even if that is true you mustn't think of me--because I belong--every
bit of me--to Abel."

He stared at her for a moment in silence. "Then it's true," he said at
last under his breath.

"It has always been true--ever since anything was true."

"But you didn't always know it."

"I had to grow to it. I believe I have been growing to it forever.
Everything has helped me to it--even my mistakes."

She spoke quite simply. Her earnestness was so large that it had swept
away her shyness and her self-consciousness, as a strong wind sweeps
away the smoke over the autumn meadows. And yet this very earnestness,
this passionate sincerity, added but another fold to the luminous evil
of mystery in which she was enveloped. He could not understand her when
she tried to tear the veil away and the terrible clearness of her soul
blinded his sight. Therein lay her charm for him--he could never reach
her, could never possess her even should she seek to approach him.
Behind the mystery of darkness which he might penetrate, there was still
the mystery of light.

"If you really care about him like that I don't see why you gave him up
and went away from him," he said helplessly. "You wanted to go. Nobody
urged you. It was your own choice."

"Yes, that's what you could never understand. I wasn't really going away
from him when I went. I was going to him. It was a long and a roundabout
road, but it was safer."

"You mean it brought you back in the end?"

"It not only brought me back, it showed me things by the way. It made me
understand about you and Blossom."

"By Jove!" he exclaimed, and was silent. The pang of his loss was
swallowed up in the amplitude of his wonder.

"Are you going to marry him, Molly?" he asked when the silence had
become unbearable.

"If he wants me. I'm not quite sure that he wants me. I know he loves
me," she added, "but that isn't just the same."

He did not answer, and they stood looking beyond the thick foliage in
the Haunt's Walk, to the meadows, over which a golden haze shimmered as
though it were filled with the beating of invisible wings.

"Molly," he said suddenly. "Shall I go after Blossom?"

"Oh, if you would, dear Jonathan," she answered.

Without a word, he turned from her and wa