irst came here, Angela, before he met Molly
Merryweather. It's singular the fascination that girl possesses for the
men around here."

Gay laughed shortly. "Well, it's a primitive folk, isn't it?" he said,
"and gets on my nerves after a while."

Through the afternoon he was restless and out of humour, tormented less
by the memory of Blossom's face than by the little brown mole on her
cheek. He resolved a dozen times a day that he would not see her, and in
the very act of resolving, he would begin to devise means of waylaying
her as she went down to the store or passed to and from the pasture. A
certain sex hatred, which is closely allied to the mere physical fact of
love, asserted itself at times, and he raged hotly against her coldness,
her indifference, against the very remoteness that attracted him. Then
he would soften to her, and with the softening there came always the
longing not only to see, but to touch her--to breathe her breath, to lay
his hand on her throat.

The next day he went to the willow copse, but she did not come. On the
one following, he took down his gun and started out to shoot partridges,
but when the hour of the meeting came, he found himself wandering over
the fields near the Revercombs' pasture with his eye on the little path
down which she had come that rimy October morning. The third afternoon,
when he had watched for her in a fury of disappointment, he ordered his
horse and went for a gallop down the sunken road to the mill. At the
first turn, where the woods opened into a burned out clearing, he came
suddenly upon her, and the hunger at his heart gave place to a delicious
sense of fulfilment.

"Blossom, how can you torture me so?" he exclaimed when he had
dismounted at her side and flung his arm about her.

She drew slowly away, submissive even in her avoidance.

"I did not mean to torture you--I'm sorry," she answered humbly.

"It's come to this!" he burst out, "that I can't stand it another week
without losing my senses. I've thought till I'm distracted. Blossom,
will you marry me?"

"O Mr. Jonathan!" she gasped while her breast fluttered like a bird's.

"Not openly, of course--there's my mother to think of--but I'll take
you to Washington--we'll find a way somehow. Can't you arrange to go to
Applegate for a day or two, or let your people think you have?"

"I can--yes--" she responded in the same troubled tone. "I've a school
friend living there, and I sometimes spend several