“It’s different now.  I’ve got a right to know.”

“You’ll never know anything because you have the ‘right’ to,” she returned impatiently.  “I hate the word—­how silly you are, Abel.”

“If you’d call me mad you’d come nearer to it, I reckon.  It’s the way of the Hawtreys—­we’ve always gone neck and crop over the fences without giving a thought to the damage we’ve done by the way.  My mother went like that at religion—­she’s gone over so hard to religion that she hasn’t left a piece of her for common humanity.  All the world is divided for her between religion and damnation.  I believe she thinks the very eggs in the hen-house are predestined to be saved or damned.  And with me it’s the same, only it isn’t religion, but you.  It’s all you to me, Molly, even the spring.”

“You’re so wholehearted, and I’m so lightminded.  You ought to have loved a staid, sober woman.  I was born passionate and changeful just as you were born passionate and steady.”

“Don’t, Molly, if you only knew how you hurt me when you talk like that.  You’ve flown into my heart like a little blue bird into a cage, and there you’ll beat and flutter, but you can’t get out.  Some day you’ll rest there quiet, sweetheart.”

“Don’t call it a cage, and never, never try to hold me or I’ll fly away.”

“Yet you love me, Molly?”

She threw her arms about his neck, rising on tiptoe while she kissed his mouth.  “I love you—­and yet in my heart I don’t really believe in love,” she answered.  “I shouldn’t be surprised to wake up any morning and find that I had dreamed it.”

“It makes me want to curse those that put your mind out of joint when you were little and innocent.”

“I don’t believe I was ever little and innocent—­I was born out of bitterness.”

“Then I’ll cure you, darling.  I’ll love you so hard that you’ll forget all the terrible things you knew as a child.”

She shook her head, gaily and yet with a touch of scorn for his assurance.  “You may try with all your strength, but when a sapling has been bent crooked you can’t pull it straight.”

“But you aren’t crooked, Molly,” he answered, kissing her throat above her open blouse.

She glowed at his kiss, and for one instant, it seemed to them that their spirits touched as closely as their bodies, while the longing and the rapture of spring drew them together.

“You’re mine now, Molly—­I’ve got you close,” he said as he held her.

At his words the rosy waves upon which they had floated broke suddenly on the earth, and turning slowly they walked hand in hand out of the field into the turnpike.  A strange shyness had fallen over them, for when Molly tried to meet his eyes, she found that her lashes trembled and fell;—­yet this shyness was as delicious as the ecstasy from which it had come.