As they clung together in a passion of despair and of pity—­the one appealing by sheer helplessness, the other giving succour out of an abundant self-reliance—­Gay became conscious that he was witnessing the secret wonder of Molly’s nature.  The relation of woman to man was dwarfed suddenly by an understanding of the relation of woman to woman.  Deeper than the dependence of sex, simpler, more natural, closer to the earth, as though it still drew its strength from the soil, he realized that the need of woman for woman was not written in the songs nor in the histories of men, but in the neglected and frustrated lives which the songs and the histories of men had ignored.

“Tell me, Blossom—­tell Molly,” said the soft voice again.

“Molly!” he said sharply, and as she looked at him over Blossom’s prostrate head, he met a light of anger that seemed, while it lasted, to illumine her features.

“Blossom and I were married nearly two years ago,” he said.

“Nearly two years ago?” she repeated.  “Why have we never known it?”

“I had to think of my mother,” he replied almost doggedly.  Then driven by a rush of anger against Blossom because she was to blame for it all—­because he had ever seen her, because he had ever desired her, because he had ever committed the supreme folly of marrying her, and, most of all, because she had, in her indiscretion, betrayed him to Molly—­he added with the cruelty which is possible sometimes to generous and kindly natures—­“It was a mistake, of course.  I am ready to do anything in my power for her happiness, but it wouldn’t be for her happiness for us to start living together.”

Blossom raised her face from Molly’s bosom, and the strong sunlight shining through the coloured leaves, showed the blanched look of her skin and the fine lines chiselled by tears around her eyes.  Encircling her mouth, which Gay had once described as looking “as though it would melt if you kissed it,” there was now a heavy blue shadow which detracted from the beauty of her still red and voluptuous lips.  In many ways she was finer, larger, nobler than when he had first met her—­for experience, which had blighted her physical loveliness, appeared, also, to have increased the dignity and quietness of her soul.  Had Gay been able to see her soul it would probably have moved him, for he was easily stirred by the thing that was beneath the eyes.  But it was impossible to present a woman’s soul to him as a concrete image.

“I don’t want to live with him—­I don’t want anything from him,” responded Blossom, with pride.  “I don’t want anything from him ever again,” she repeated, and putting Molly’s arms away from her, she turned and moved slowly down the Haunt’s Walk toward the Poplar Spring.

“I couldn’t help loving you, could I, Molly?” he asked in a low voice.

Her face was pale and stern when she answered.

“And you couldn’t help loving Blossom last year, I suppose?”