y from facts, or from a logic as inexorable as
facts, that she was conscious of a baffled and exasperated sensation
when she was confronted by anything intangible which would not, as she
put it in her own mind, "get out of her way." It was natural enough, she
knew, that a material object or condition should possess the power
to block one's progress or even to change the normal current of one's
existence. Such things had happened a dozen times at least in her
limited experience. But when a mere emotion assumed the importance
and the reality of a solid body, she was seized by the indignant
astonishment with which a mathematician might regard the differential
calculus if it ceased suddenly to behave as he expected it to do. She
had always controlled her own feeling with severity, and it was beyond
the power of her imagination to conceive a possible excuse--unless it
was a disordered liver--for another person's inability to do the
same. Besides, as she had often asked herself, what was the use of not
controlling your feelings when you came to think about it?

"Thar ain't a bit of use in yo' goin' on this way over that girl, Abel,"
she said presently, as an annotation to his last remark, "you'd better
jest start along about yo' work, an' put her right straight out of yo'
mind. I al'ays knew thar warn't a particle of sense in it."

There was sound reason in her advice, and he did not attempt to dispute
it. The unfortunate part was, however, that in the very soundness of
her reason lay its point of offence. Philosophy was dealing again in her
high handed fashion with emotion, and emotion, in its turn, was treating
philosophy with an absence of that respectful consideration to which
she was entitled. Abel knew quite as well as Sarah that there wasn't "a
particle of sense" in his thinking of Molly; but the possession of this
knowledge did not interfere in the least with either the intensity or
the persistence of his thought of her. His mind seemed to have as much
control over the passion that raged in his heart as an admonishing
apostle of peace has over a mob that is headed toward destruction. At
the moment he felt that the last straw--the one burden more that he
could not bear--was to be told to follow what he admitted to be the only
clear and rational course. Turning away from her without a reply, he
rushed through the open gate and across the road and the poplar log into
the friendly shelter of his mill.

"What he needs is