"You'd better go
in and lie down, Judy, you look like a ghost."
"I don't want to lie down--I wish I were dead," replied Judy, choking
back her hysterical sobs. Then turning suddenly into the mill, she sank
against the old mill-stone on the wooden platform and burst into a fit
of wild and agonized weeping. Her hand, when he touched it, was as cold
as clay and as unresponsive to his.
"Judy," he said and his voice was wonderfully gentle, "does it really
mean so much to you? Are you honestly grieving like this about Mr.
Mullen?"
If he had only known it his gentleness to her was the thing for which
at times she almost hated him. The woman in her was very primitive--a
creature that harked back to the raw sensations of the jungle--and
nothing less than sheer brutality on Abel's part could free her from the
charm of the young clergyman's unconscious cruelty.
She looked up at him with accusing eyes, which said, "I don't care who
knows that I love him," as plainly as did her huddled and trembling
figure, clinging pathetically to the old mill-stone, as though it were
some crudely symbolic Rock of Ages which she embraced.
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