Besides, as she had often asked herself, what was the use of not controlling your feelings when you came to think about it?
"Thar ain't a bit of use in yo' goin' on this way over that girl, Abel," she said presently, as an annotation to his last remark, "you'd better jest start along about yo' work, an' put her right straight out of yo' mind.

I al'ays knew thar warn't a particle of sense in it." There was sound reason in her advice, and he did not attempt to dispute it.

The unfortunate part was, however, that in the very soundness of her reason lay its point of offence.

Philosophy was dealing again in her high handed fashion with emotion, and emotion, in its turn, was treating philosophy with an absence of that respectful consideration to which she was entitled.

Abel knew quite as well as Sarah that there wasn't "a particle of sense" in his thinking of Molly; but the possession of this knowledge did not interfere in the least with either the intensity or the persistence of his thought of her.