“I hope you haven’t any hard feeling toward me,” she said presently, sweetly commonplace.

“Oh no, I haven’t any hard feeling.  Good-bye, Molly.”

“Good-bye, Abel.”

Turning away from her, he walked rapidly back along the short grassy path over the snowdrops.  As she watched him, a lump rose in her throat, and she asked herself what would happen if she were to call after him, and when he looked round, run straight into his arms?  She wanted to run into his arms, but her knowledge of herself told her that once there she would not want to stay.  The sense of bondage would follow—­on his part the man’s effort to dominate; on hers the woman’s struggle for the integrity of personality.  As long as he did not possess her she knew that emotion would remain paramount over judgment—­that the longing to win her would triumph over the desire to improve what he had won.  But once surrendered, the very strength and singleness of his love would bring her to cage.  The swallow flights and the freedom of the sky would be over, and she would either beat her wings hopelessly against the bars, or learn to eat from his hand, to sing presently at his whistle.  Had passion urged her, this hesitancy would have been impossible.  Then she would either have seen none of these things, or, having seen them, she would have dared greatly.  She was too cool, too clear-sighted, perhaps, for a heroine of romance.  The single virtue that has fed vampire-like on the blood of the others, the abject attitude of the heart, the moral chicanery of sex—­she would have none of these things.

“I am very fond of him, but I want to live—­to live,” she said, raising her arms with a free movement to the sky, while she looked after his figure.  “Poor Abel,” she added after a moment, “he will never get over it.”

Then, while the sigh of compassion was still on her lips, she was arrested by a scene which occurred in the sunny meadow.  From the brook a woman’s form had risen like a startled rabbit at Abel’s approach, wavering against the background of willows, as if uncertain whether to advance or to retreat.  The next instant, as though in obedience to some mental change, it came quickly forward and faced the miller with an upward movement of the hands to shelter a weeping face.

“I believe—­I really believe it is Judy Hatch,” said Molly to herself, and there was a faint displeasure in her voice.  “I wonder what she is doing in the willows?”

Judy Hatch it was, and at sight of Abel she had sprung up in terror from the edge of the brook, poised for flight like a wild thing before the gun of the hunter.  He saw that her eyes were red and swollen from weeping, her face puckered and distorted.  The pain in his own heart was so acute that for a moment he felt a sensation of relief in finding that he was not alone in his agony—­that the universal portion of suffering had not been allotted entirely to himself, as he had imagined.  Had she smiled, he would have brushed past her in silence, but because of her agitated and despairing look, he called her name, and when she turned toward him in bewilderment, held out his hand.  It was a small accident that brought them together—­nothing more than the fact that she had stooped to bathe her eyes in the stream before going on to the turnpike.