Nobody on earth can be softer than you, Molly, when you want to, and it's your softness, after all, that has held me in spite of your treatment.

Why, your mouth was like a flower when I kissed you, and parted and clung to me---" "I wish you wouldn't talk about it.

I hate to hear such things after they are over." "Such things!" He stood flicking hopelessly with a small branch he carried at the carrot flowers in the field.

"If you will tell me honestly that you were playing with me, Molly, I'll give you up this minute," he said.
The colour was high in her face and she did not look at him.
"I was playing with you, and I told you so the day afterwards," she replied.
"Yes, but you didn't mean it.

I can't go any further because this is Mr.
Jonathan's land." His eyes had in them the hurt reproachful look of a wounded dog's, and his voice trembled a little.
"I meant always--always to lead you on until I could hurt you--as I did the others--and then throw you over." "And now that you can hurt me, you throw me over ?" he asked.
Without speaking, she held out her hand for the basket, which he was about to fling from him.
"Then I'll never forgive you, Molly, so help me God," he added harshly; and turning away from her, struck out across the pasture in the direction of the mill.
For a moment she stood looking after him, her lips parted, her eyes wide and bright as if she were asking a question.
"I am hard--hard and cruel," she thought as she went slowly up the witch-hazel path that led by the Poplar Spring, "but I wonder--oh, I wonder if I treat Abel worst because I like him best ?".