“Oh, there’s a reason!” she called over her shoulder.

A sudden thought appeared to strike him at her words, and turning quickly in the path, he looked after her until she disappeared down the winding path amid the tangle of shrubbery.

“Jove, she is amazingly pretty!” he said at last under his breath.

CHAPTER XVI

THE COMING OF SPRING

The winter began in a long rain and ended in a heavy snow which lay for a week over the country.  In the chill mornings while she dressed, Molly watched the blue-black shadows of the crows skimming over the white ground, and there was always a dumb anxiety at her heart as she looked after them.

On Christmas Eve there had been a dance at Piping Tree, and because she had danced twice with Gay (who had ridden over in obedience to a whim), Abel had parted from her in anger.  For the first time she had felt the white heat of his jealousy, and it had aroused rebellion, not acquiescence, in her heart.  Jonathan Gay was nothing to her (though he called her his cousin)—­he had openly shown his preference for Blossom—­but she insisted passionately that she was free and would dance with whomsoever she pleased.  To Abel’s demand that she should give up “round dances” entirely, she had returned a defiant and mocking laugh.  They had parted in an outburst of temper, to rush wildly together a few days later when they met by chance in the turnpike.

“You love him, but you don’t love him enough, honey,” said Reuben, patting her head.  “You love yourself still better than him.”

“Three months ago he hardly dared hope for me—­he would have kissed the dust under my feet—­and now he flies into fits of jealousy because I dance with another man.”

“‘Tis human natur to go by leaps an’ starts in love, Molly.”

“It’s a foolish way, grandfather.”

“Well, I ain’t claimin’ that we’re over-wise, but thar’s al’ays life ready to teach us.”

When the snow thawed, spring appeared so suddenly that it looked as if it had lain there all winter in a green and gold powder over the meadows.  Flashes of blue, like bits of fallen sky, showed from the rail fences; and the notes of robins fluted up from the budding willows beside the brook.  On the hill behind Reuben Merryweather’s cottage the peach-trees bloomed, and red-bud and dogwood filled the grey woods with clouds of delicate colour.  Spring, which germinated in the earth, moved also, with a strange restlessness, in the hearts of men and women.  As the weeks passed, that inextinguishable hope, which mounts always with the rising sap, looked from their faces.

On the morning of her birthday, a warm April day, Molly smiled at herself in the mirror, and because the dimples became her, wondered how she could manage to keep on smiling forever.  Blushing and paling she tried a ribbon on her hair, threw it aside, and picked up another.