but, like other philosophers of whom he had never heard, it was impossible for him to distinguish the qualities of the thing-in-itself from the qualities of the phenomenon beneath his eyes.  Had he winnowed his superficial impressions the underlying thought would probably have been:  “No woman with a bosom as flat as that can have any nonsense about her.”  From the first moment of their meeting he had never doubted that it was this lack of “nonsense” which had attracted him.  He liked her evident indifference to his opinion of her, and he liked, too, her listless silence, when she sat, with clasped hands, gazing straight ahead through the shadowy colonnade of the woods.  Not once had her troubled look wandered from the moist dead leaves on the ground, to the misty edges of the forest, where small wild flowers thronged in a pale procession of pipsissewa, ladies’ tresses, and Enchanter’s nightshade.

“Did you know that the Gays are in Europe?” asked Judy turning her eyes on his face for the first time.

His heart gave a throb and was quiet.

“No, I hadn’t heard it,” he replied in an arid voice.

“They say it’s more than likely Molly will marry Mr. Jonathan.  He’s waitin’ on her.”

Reaching for the whip, Abel touched the mare lightly on her glossy flank.  After that single pang his suffering had left him—­for six weeks of sleepless nights and tormented days had exhausted his endurance and reduced him to a condition of emotional lassitude.  In his brief reaction from spiritual revolt into a state of apathetic submission, he approached his mother’s permanent austerity of mind as closely as he was ever likely to do in the whole of his experience.  The mere possibility of a fresh awakening of feeling filled him with aversion.  At the moment he had as profound a distrust as Sarah of the immaterial elements; and looking ahead, he saw his future stretching before him as firm and flat as the turnpike which he was approaching.  Delight and despair were equally distasteful to him.  He shrank as instinctively from the thought of love as a man shrinks from re-opening an old wound which is still sensitive to the touch, though it has ceased to ache.  And so prone is human nature to affirm its inherent belief in the eternity of the present, that he was assured, not only that this was the most desirable point of view he had ever reached, but that it was entirely out of the question that he should ever travel beyond it to another.  Forgetting the many times when he had revolted from advice merely because it was “sensible,” he began calmly to arrange his life in accordance with that law of practical expediency against which a month ago he had so hotly rebelled.

As they drove out of the woods, and turned into the sunken road beyond the ordinary which led in the direction of Solomon Hatch’s farm, he withdrew his gaze from the head of his mare and looked attentively at his companion.

“I hope you are having an easier time, Judy,” he said.