For a moment they were silent again. Old Adam, having fulfilled his purpose, was dismissed into space. Molly watched Abel's eyes turn to the pines on the horizon, and in the midst of the June meadow, there was a look in them that reminded her of the autumnal sadness of nature. She had seen this look in Reuben's face when he gazed wistfully at the blossoming apple boughs in the spring, and the thought came to her that just this attitude of soul--this steadfast courage in the face of circumstance--was the thing that life was meant to teach them both at the end. If Abel's energy was now less effervescent, she realized instinctively that it had become more assured. Life or marriage--or, perhaps, both together had "tamed" him, as Reuben had prophesied, and the rough edges of his character had worn smooth in the process. A butterfly, marked gorgeously in blue and orange, alighted on the bar by her hand, and when it fluttered off again, drunken with summer, her gaze followed it into the meadow, where the music of innumerable bees filled the sunshine. "And you, Abel?" she asked, turning presently, "what of yourself?" He smiled at her before answering; and with the smile, she felt again the old physical joy in his presence--in his splendid animal vitality, in the red-brown colour of his flesh, in the glow of his dark eyes, which smiled down into hers. No other man had ever made this appeal to her senses. She had struggled sometimes like a bird in a net against the memory of it, yet it had held her, in spite of her will, even when she was farthest away from him. The gentleness from which Judy revolted, brought Molly's heart back to him with a longing to comfort. "Well, I'm learning," he answered, still smiling. "And you are happy?" He made a gesture of assent, while he looked over her head at the butterfly--which had found its mate and was soaring heavenward in a flight of ecstasy. The same loyalty which had prevented his touching her hand when they met, rebelled now against an implied reflection on Judy. "I am glad," she said, "you deserve it."