“Well, I’m learning,” he answered, still smiling.

“And you are happy?”

He made a gesture of assent, while he looked over her head at the butterfly—­which had found its mate and was soaring heavenward in a flight of ecstasy.  The same loyalty which had prevented his touching her hand when they met, rebelled now against an implied reflection on Judy.

“I am glad,” she said, “you deserve it.”

She had given her eyes to him almost unconsciously, and their look was like a cord which drew them slowly to each other.  His pulses hammered in his ears, yet he heard around him still the mellow murmuring of bees, and saw the butterflies whirling deliriously together.  All the forces which had held him under restraint stretched suddenly, while he met her eyes, like bands that were breaking.  Before the solitary primal fact of his love for her, the fog of tradition with which civilization has enveloped the simple relation of man and woman, evaporated in the sunlight.  The harsh outlines of the future were veiled, and he saw only the present, crowned, radiant, and sweet to the senses as the garlands of wild grape around which the golden bees hung in a cloud.  For an instant only the vision held him; then the rush of desire faded slowly, and some unconquerable instinct, of which he had been almost unconscious, asserted its supremacy in his brain.  The ghosts of dead ancestors who had adhered to law at the cost of happiness; the iron skeleton of an outgrown and yet indelibly implanted creed; the tenacity of the racial structure against which his individual impulses had rebelled—­these things, or one of these things, proved in the end stronger than the appeal of his passion.  He longed with all his strength to hold her in his arms—­every nerve in his body ached for her—­yet he knew that because of this unconquerable instinct he was powerless to follow his longing.

“I don’t think I deserve much, Molly,” he said quietly.

She hesitated still, looking away from him in the direction of her path, which led over the meadow.

“Abel, be good to Judy,” she said, without turning.

“I will, Molly, I promise you.”

He moved a step toward the turnpike, stopped, and looked back.

“I can’t do much for you, Molly,” he said, “but if you ever need anybody to die for you, remember I’m ready.”

“I’ll remember,” she answered, with a smile, but her eyes were misty when she passed the blazed pine and turned into the little path.

CHAPTER X

TANGLED THREADS