“You got my letter, Molly?” he asked—­and the question was unfortunate, for it reminded her not only of the letter, but of Gay’s innocent jest about the dove on the envelope.  She had been ashamed at the instant, and she was ashamed now when she remembered it, for there is nothing so contagious as an active regard for the petty social values of life.  In three days she had not only begun to lose her own crudeness—­she had attained to a certain small criticism of the crudeness of Abel.  Already the difference between the two men was irritating her, yet she was still unconscious as to the the exact particular in which this difference lay.  Her vision had perceived the broad distinction of class, though it was untrained as yet to detect minute variations of manner.  She knew instinctively that Gay looked a man of the world and Abel a rustic, but this did not shake in the least the knowledge that it was Abel, not Gay, whom she loved.

“Yes, I got your letter,” she answered, and then she added very softly:  “Abel, I’ve always known I was not good enough for you.”

Her tone, not her words, checked his advance, and he stood staring at her in perplexity.  It was this expression of dumb questioning which had so often reminded her of the look in the eyes of Reuben’s hound, and as she met it now, she flinched a little from the thought of the pain she was inflicting.

“I’m not good and faithful, Abel; I’m not patient, I’m not thrifty, I’m not anything your wife ought to be.”

“You’re all I’m wanting, anyway, Molly,” he replied quietly, but without moving toward her.

“I feel—­I am quite sure we could not be happy together,” she went on, hurriedly, as if in fear that he might interrupt her before she had finished.

“Do you mean that you want to be free?” he asked after a minute.

“I don’t know, but I don’t want to marry anybody.  All the feeling I had went out of me when grandfather died—­I’ve been benumbed ever since—­and I don’t want to feel ever again, that’s the worst of it.”

“Is this because of the quarrel?”

“Oh, know—­you know, I was always like this.  I’m a thing of freedom—­I can’t be caged, and so we’d go on quarrelling and kissing, kissing and quarrelling, until I went out of my mind.  You’d want to make me over and I’d want to make you over, like two foolish children fighting at play.”

It was true what she had said, and he realized it, even though he protested against it.  She was a thing of freedom as much as one of the swallows that flashed by in the sunlight.

“And you don’t want to marry me?  You want to be free—­to be rich?”

“It isn’t the money—­but I don’t want to marry.”

“Have you ever loved me, I wonder?” he asked a little bitterly.

For an instant she hesitated, trying in some fierce self-reproach to be honest.  “I thought so once, and I suppose I’ll think so again,” she answered.  “The truth is I’ve loved you some days, and some days I haven’t.  I’ve never believed much in it, you know—­I wasn’t that kind of woman.  It always meant so much less to me than to others.”