“Why shouldn’t I?” she answered passionately, “that was what I loved.”

“I suppose you’re right,” he said a little sadly, “that was always what you loved.”

She turned her head away, but he saw the delicate flush pass from her cheek to her throat.

“I mean I am faithful to the things that really matter,” she answered.

“And the things that do not really matter are men?” he asked with a humour in which there was a touch of grimness.

“Perhaps you’re right about some of them, at least,” she answered, smiling at a memory.  “I was full of animal spirits—­of the joy of energy, and there was no other outlet.  A girl sows her mental wild oats, if she has any mind, just as a boy does.  But what people never seem to realize is that women go on and change just as men do.  They seem to think that a girl stands perfectly still, that what she is at twenty, she remains to the end of her life.  Of course that’s absurd.  After the first shock of real experience that old make-believe side of things lost all attraction for me.  I could no more go back to flirting with Mr. Mullen or with Jim Halloween than I could sit down in the road and make mud pies for an amusement.  How is Mr. Mullen, by the way?” she inquired in a less serious tone.

“Just the same.  He’s had a call.”

“And old Adam?  Is he still living?”

“He can’t walk any longer, but his mind is perfectly clear.  Sometimes his son puts his chair into an oxcart and brings him over to the ordinary.  He’s still the best talker about here, and he frets if he is left by himself.”

For a moment they were silent again.  Old Adam, having fulfilled his purpose, was dismissed into space.  Molly watched Abel’s eyes turn to the pines on the horizon, and in the midst of the June meadow, there was a look in them that reminded her of the autumnal sadness of nature.  She had seen this look in Reuben’s face when he gazed wistfully at the blossoming apple boughs in the spring, and the thought came to her that just this attitude of soul—­this steadfast courage in the face of circumstance—­was the thing that life was meant to teach them both at the end.  If Abel’s energy was now less effervescent, she realized instinctively that it had become more assured.  Life or marriage—­or, perhaps, both together had “tamed” him, as Reuben had prophesied, and the rough edges of his character had worn smooth in the process.

A butterfly, marked gorgeously in blue and orange, alighted on the bar by her hand, and when it fluttered off again, drunken with summer, her gaze followed it into the meadow, where the music of innumerable bees filled the sunshine.

“And you, Abel?” she asked, turning presently, “what of yourself?”

He smiled at her before answering; and with the smile, she felt again the old physical joy in his presence—­in his splendid animal vitality, in the red-brown colour of his flesh, in the glow of his dark eyes, which smiled down into hers.  No other man had ever made this appeal to her senses.  She had struggled sometimes like a bird in a net against the memory of it, yet it had held her, in spite of her will, even when she was farthest away from him.  The gentleness from which Judy revolted, brought Molly’s heart back to him with a longing to comfort.