Looking at her suddenly, he realized that she had heard nothing of what he was saying.  If he had looked deeper still he would have seen the tragedy of her lovely little soul spinning the web of its perishing illusion.  Of all the martyrdoms allotted to love’s victims, she was enduring the bitterest, which is the martyrdom of frustration.  Yet because she appeared dull and undesirable on the surface, he had declined, with the rest of Old Church, to regard her emotions any less casually than he regarded her complexion.

“Well, I ought to be a proud man to have you, Judy,” he remarked, and rose to his feet.

“I hope neither of us will ever regret it,” she returned.

“Not if I can help it,” he said, and, putting his arm around her, he drew her to him and kissed her lips.  It was the second time he had kissed her, and on the first occasion she had burst into hysterical weeping.  He did not know that it was the only caress she had ever received, and that she had wept because it had fallen so far short of what her imagination had deluded her into expecting.  Now, though she had herself well in hand and gave no visible sign of her disappointment, there was a fierce, though unspoken, protest in her heart.  “To think that after all the nights I’ve lain awake an’ wondered what ’twas like, it should turn out to be so terrible flat,” she said bitterly to herself.

“It’s just a fortnight off now, Judy,” he remarked gently, if not tenderly.

“I hope your mother will get on with me, Abel.”

“She sets great store by you now.  You’re pious, and she likes that even though you do go to the Episcopal church.  I heard her say yesterday that it was a rare thing to see a girl find as much comfort in her religion as you do.”

“You’ll never want to come between me and my church work, will you, Abel?  I do most of the Foreign Mission work, you know, an’ I teach in Sunday school and I visit the sick every Friday.”

“Come between?  Why, it makes me proud of you!  When I asked Mr. Mullen about marrying us, he said:  ’She’s been as good as a right hand to me ever since I came here, Revercomb.’”

“Tell me over again.  What were his words exactly?”

“‘She’s been as good as a right hand to me, Revercomb,’ that was what he said, and he added, ’She’s the salt of the earth, that’s the only way to describe her.’  And now, goodbye, Judy, I must be going back to work.”

Without glancing round, he went at his rapid stride down the narrow walk to the whitewashed gate, which hung loose on broken hinges.  In the road he came face to face with Jonathan Gay, who was riding leisurely in the direction of Jordan’s Journey.

“How are you, Revercomb?  All well?”

“Yes, all well, thank you.”  Turning in his tracks, he gazed thoughtfully after the rider for a moment.

“I wonder why he came out of his way instead of keeping to the turnpike?” he thought, and a minute later, “that’s the third time he’s come back since the family left Jordan’s Journey.”