"Why in thunder do you want to do that?"
"There's something I must see about. I can't wait. I never can wait when
I want anything."
"So I have observed. This something is so important, by the way, that you haven't thought of it for six months?"
"Well, I've thought of it—sometimes," she admitted.
"Can't you tell me what it is, Molly?"
She shook her head. Her face was pink and her eyes shone; whatever it was, it had obviously enriched her beauty.
"Tell me, little girl," he repeated and leaned closer. There had always been something comfortable and warm in his nearness to her, and under the influence of it, she felt tempted to cry out, "I want to go back to find out if Abel still loves me! I am an idiot, I know, but I feel that I shall die if I discover that he has got over caring. This suspense is more than I can bear, yet I never knew until I felt it, how much he means to me."
This was what she wanted to say, but instead of uttering it, she merely murmured:
"I can't, Jonathan, you would never understand." Her whole being was vibrant to-night with the desire for love, yet, in spite of his wide experience with the passion, she knew that he would not comprehend what she meant by the word. It wasn't his kind of love in the least that she wanted; it differed from his as the light of the sun differs from the blaze of a prairie fire. "It's just a feeling," she added, helplessly. "You don't have feelings, I suppose?"
"Don't I?" he echoed. "Oh, Molly, if you only knew how many!"