think I care what a man imagines of me who believes a thing
against me as easily as you do. If you went on your knees to me now I
should never explain--and if I chose to kiss every man in the county,"
she concluded in an outburst of passion, "you have nothing to do with
it!"

"Explain? How can a girl explain a man's kissing her, except by saying
she let him do it?"

"I did let him do it," she gasped.

For an instant they gazed at each other in an anger more violent in its
manifestation than their love had been. An observer, noticing them for
the first time, would have concluded that they had hated each other for
years, not that they had been lovers only a few minutes before. Nature,
having wearied of her play, was destroying her playthings.

"I would marry no man on earth who wouldn't believe me in spite of
that--and everything else," she said.

"Do you expect a man to believe you in spite of his eyes?"

"Eyes, ears--everything! Do you think I'd have turned on you like that
before I had heard you?"

A sob, not of pity, but of rage, burst from her lips, and the sound
sobered him more completely than her accusations had done. Her temper he
could withstand, but that little childish sob, bitten back almost before
it escaped, brought him again on his knees to her.

"I can't understand--oh, Molly, don't you see I am in torment?" he
cried.

But the veil of softness was gone now, and the cruelty that is bound up
in some inexplicable way in all violent emotion--even in the emotion of
love--showed itself on the surface.

"Then stay there, for you've made it for yourself," she answered, and
turned away from him. As his voice called her again, she broke into a
run, flying before him over the green meadow until she reached the lawn
of Jordan's Journey, and his pursuit ended. Then, hurrying through the
orchard and up the flagged walk, she ascended the steps, and bent over
Reuben in his chair.

"Grandfather, I am back. Are you asleep?"

The robin that had flown from the railing at her approach swung on the
bough of an apple-tree and regarded her with attention.

"Grandfather," she said again, touching him, "oh, grandfather, wake up!"

CHAPTER XX

LIFE'S IRONIES

When he came down to breakfast next morning, Abel heard of Reuben's
death from his mother.

"Well, you can't tell who's goin' to be the next," she concluded grimly,
as she poured the coffee.

In spite of her austere manner and her philosophical