He did not look back, and when he had passed out of hearing, she repeated her words with a passionate repudiation of the thing he had suggested, "I'm not, Abel!—I'm not!"
CHAPTER XIV
THE TURN OF THE WHEEL
Tears blinded her eyes as she crossed the pasture, and when she brushed them away, she could see nothing distinctly except the single pointed maple that lifted its fiery torch above the spectral procession of the aspens in the graveyard. She had passed under the trees at the Poplar Spring, and was deep in the witch-hazel boughs which made a screen for the Haunt's Walk, when beyond a sudden twist in the path, she saw ahead of her the figures of Blossom Revercomb and Jonathan Gay. At first they showed merely in dim outlines standing a little apart, with the sunlit branch of a sweet gum tree dropping between them. Then as Molly went forward over the velvety carpet of leaves, she saw the girl make a swift and appealing movement of her arms.
"Oh, Jonathan, if you only would! I can't bear it any longer!" she cried, with her hands on his shoulders.
He drew away, kindly, almost caressingly. He was in hunting clothes, and the barrel of his gun, Molly saw, came between him and Blossom, gently pressing her off.
"You don't understand, Blossom, I've told you a hundred times it is out of the question," he answered.
Then looking up his eyes met Molly's, and he stood silent without defence or explanation, before her.
"What is impossible, Jonathan? Can I help you?" she asked impulsively, and going quickly to Blossom's side she drew the girl's weeping face to her breast. "You're in trouble, darling—tell me, tell Molly about it," she said.
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.