But Molly was in
the mood when the need to talk--to let oneself go--is so great that the
choice of a listener is little more than an accident. She had discovered
at last--discovered in that illuminating moment in Applegate--the
meaning of the homesickness, of the restlessness, of the despondency of
the last few months. Before she could understand what Abel had meant to
her, she had been obliged to draw away from him, to measure him from a
distance, to put the lucid revealing silence between them. It was like
looking at a mountain, when one must fall back to the right angle of
view, must gain the proper perspective, before one can judge of the
space it fills on the horizon. What she needed was merely to see Abel
in relation to other things in her life, to learn how immeasurably he
towered above them. Her blood rushed through her veins with a burning
sweetness, and while she stood there watching Kesiah, the wonder and
the intoxication of magic was upon her. She had passed within the
Enchanter's circle, and her soul was dancing to the music of flutes.
"Aunt Kesiah," she asked suddenly, and her voice thrilled, "were you
ever in love?"
Kesiah looked up from the sheets with the expression of a person who has
been interrupted in the serious business of life by the fluttering of
a humming-bird.
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