At dawn next morning Abel passed again, driving in the direction of the Applegate road.  The day was breaking clear and still, and over the autumnal pageantry in the abandoned fields, innumerable silver cobwebs shone iridescent in the sunrise.  Squirrels were already awake, busily harvesting, and here and there a rabbit bobbed up from beneath a shelter of sassafras.  Overhead the leaves on a giant chestnut tree hung as heavily as though they were cut out of copper, and beyond a sharp twist in the corduroy road, a branch of sweet gum curved like a bent flame on the edge of the twilight dimness of the forest.  The scarlet of the leaves reminded him of the colour of Molly’s jacket, and immediately the voice somewhere in his brain repeated, “They say it will end in marriage.”  The words awoke in him a violent and unreasonable resentment.  He could think of his own marriage quite calmly, as something that did not bear directly upon his ideal of Molly; but the conception of her as Gay’s wife, struck a blow at the image he had enskied and then schooled himself into worshipping from a distance.  He was willing to relinquish her as too fair and flitting for mortal embraces, but the thought that another man should possess that elusive loveliness was like the thrust of hot iron into his wound.  That Molly loved Gay he could not believe.  That she was willing to marry him without loving him, was a suggestion which appeared to him little short of an insult.  True, he did not love Judy to whom he was to be married to-morrow, but that was a case so entirely and utterly different that there could be no comparison!  He was doing it because he was sorry for Judy and it was the only way he could help her.  Besides, had not Molly urged such a step upon him repeatedly as the fulfillment of his obvious destiny?

The reasons were all there.  He had them labelled and assorted in his mind, ready for instant reference should they be required.  Sleepless nights had gone to the preparation of them, and yet—­and yet—­in his heart he knew, beyond contradiction, that he was wedding Judy because his pity had once made a fool of him.  He had acted from the loftiest motives when he had asked her to marry him, and twenty-four hours later he would have given ten years of his life to have been able to eliminate those lofty motives from his character.  To go back on her was, of course, out of the question.  In the history of Old Church no man—­with the exception of two drunkards and old Mr. Jonathan Gay—­had ever gone back on a woman.  With girls it was different, since they, being sentimentally above the proneness to error as well as practically below the liability for maintenance, might play fast and loose wherever their fleeting fancy alighted.  But in the case of his unhappy sex an honourable inclination once yielded to, was established forever.  His sacrifice was sanctioned by custom.  There was no escape since it was tradition that held him by the throat.