did---"

"Then you'd marry me."

"Well, if I were obliged to marry _somebody_, I'd rather marry you than
anybody else."

"So you do like me a little?"

"Yes, I suppose I like you a little--but all men are the same--mother
used always to tell me so."

Poor distraught Janet Merryweather! There were times when he was seized
with a fierce impatience of her, for it seemed to him that her ghost
stood, like the angel with the drawn sword, before the closed gates of
his paradise. He remembered her as a passionate frail creature, with
accusing eyes that had never lost the expression with which they had met
and passed through some hour of despair and disillusionment.

"But how could she judge, Molly? How could she judge?" he pleaded "She
was ill, she wasn't herself, you must know it. All men are not alike.
Didn't I fight her battles more than once, when you were a child?"

"I know, I know," she answered gratefully, "and I love you for it.
That's why I don't mind telling you what I've never told a single one of
the others. I haven't any heart, Abel, that's the truth. It's all play
to me, and I like the game sometimes and sometimes I hate it. Yet,
whether I like it or hate it, I always go on because I can't help it.
Your mother once said I had a devil that drives me on and perhaps she
was right--it may be that devil that drives me on and won't let me stop
even when I'm tired, and it all bores me. The rector thinks that I'll
marry him and turn pious and take to Dorcas societies, and Jim Halloween
thinks I'll marry him and grow thrifty and take to turkey raising--and
you believe in the bottom of your heart that in the end I'll fall
into your arms and find happiness with your mother. But you're
wrong--all--all--and I shan't do any of the things you expect of me. I
am going to stay here as long as grandfather lives, so I can take care
of him, and then I'll run off somewhere to the city and trim hats for a
living. When I was at school in Applegate I trimmed hats for all of the
pupils."

"Oh, Molly, Molly, I'll not give you up! Some day you'll see things
differently."

"Never--never. Now, I've warned you and it isn't my fault if you keep on
after this."

"But you do like me a little, haven't you said so?"

Her frown deepened.

"Yes, I do like you--a little."

"Then I'll keep on hoping, anyhow."

Her smile came back, but this time it had grown mocking.

"No, you mustn't hope," she answered, "at least," she corrected
p