"He must be a fool, or else it's just possible that he has got an

uncommonly clever enemy." The last thought revived the old man a

little, and he received his tea without any of the demonstrations of

disgust he had shown on drinking his coffee at breakfast.

Presently the subject of his thoughts came upon the scene, and the

visitor saw at once that his old friend was unlike himself. The Canon

was exceedingly alert from the moment Mark came into the room, trying to

catch up the faintest indication, in his voice or movements, as to

whether he were in good or low spirits; he almost thought he heard a

quick sigh as Mark sat down. He could not see that Mark was undeniably

thinner and paler than he had been only a few weeks ago, and that his

eyes looked even more bright and keen in consequence.

"Take some tea," said the Canon; and then, when he had given him time to

drink his tea, he turned on him abruptly.

"I've heard some lies about you, and I'm going to tell you what they

are."

"Perhaps it's better to be ignorant."

"No, it's not, now why did you incite young men to Socialism in South

London?"

"Good heavens!" said Mark. "Well, you shall catch it for that. I will

read you every word of that paper; not a line of anything else shall you

hear till you've been obliged to give your 'nihil obstat' to 'True and

False Socialism,' by your humble servant."

"But that's not the worst that's said of you."

"Oh, no! I know that."

Perhaps if Canon Nicholls could have seen the strained look on the young

face he could have understood. As it was, he believed him to be taking

the matter too lightly.

"When I was young," he said, "I thought it my own fault if I made

enemies, and you know where there is a great deal of smoke there has

generally been some fire."

"Then you mean to say," answered Mark, in a voice that was hard from the

effort at self-control, "that you think it is my fault that lies are

told against me, although you _do_ call them lies?"

"Frankly, I think you must have been careless," said the old man,

leaning forward and grasping the arm of his chair. "I think you must

have had too much disregard for appearances."

He paused, and there was a silence of several moments, while the ticking

of the clock was quite loud in the little room.

"Unless this is the doing of an enemy," said Canon Nicholls.

"I do not know that it is an enemy," said Mark, "but I know there is

some one who is excessively angry and excessively afraid because I know

a secret of great importance."

"And that person is a woman, I suppose?"

"I cannot answer that," said Mark. He was standing now with one elbow on

the end of the chimney-piece, and his head resting on his right hand,

looking down at the worn rug at his feet.

"Will you tell me exactly what it is they do say?" said Mark, still

speaking with an effort at cheerfulness that aggravated the nervous

state of Canon Nicholls.

And there followed another silence, during which Father Molyneux

realised to himself with fear and almost horror that he was nearly

having a quarrel with the friend he loved so much, and on whose kindness

he had always counted, and whose wisdom had so often been his guide. He

was suffering already almost more than he owned to himself, and he had

come into the room of the holy, blind old man as to a place of refuge.

It gave him a sick feeling of misery and helplessness that there seemed

in the midst of his other troubles the possibility of a quarrel with

Canon Nicholls. This at least he must prevent; and so, leaning forward,

he said very gently:

"Do tell me a little bit more of what you mean? I know you are speaking

as my friend, and, believe me, I am not ungrateful. I am sure there is a

definite story against me. I wish you would call a spade a spade quite

openly."

"They have got hold of a story that you are tired of poverty and the

priesthood, and so on, and that you will give it all up if you can

persuade a certain very rich woman to marry you."

"That is definite enough." Mark was struggling to speak without

bitterness. "And, for a moment, you thought----?" he could not finish

the sentence.

"Good God! not for a fraction of a second. How can you?"

"Oh! forgive me, forgive me; I didn't mean it."

Mark knelt down by the chair, tears were flowing from the blind eyes.

Canon Nicholls belonged to a generation whose emotions were kept under

stern control; the tears would have come more naturally from Mark. There

was a strange contrast between the academic figure of the old man in its

reserved and negative bearing, seriously annoyed with himself for

betraying the suffering he was enduring, and yet unable to check the

flow of tears, and the eager, unreserved, sympathetic attitude of the

younger man. After a few moments of silence Mark rose and began to

speak in low, quick accents----

"It is a secret which is doing infinite harm to a soul made for good

things, and yet it is a secret which I can tell no one, not even you--at

least, so I am convinced. But it is a secret by which people are

suffering. The result is that I cannot deal with this calumny as I

should deal with it if I were free; and I believe that I have not got to

the worst of it yet. I see what it must lead to."

He looked down wistfully for a moment, and then went on:

"Last year I had a dream that was full of joy and peace, and that seemed

to me God's Will; but, through you, I came to see that I must give it

up, and I threw myself into the life here with all my heart. And now,

just when I had begun to feel that I was really doing a little good, now

that I have got friends among the poor whom I love to see and help, I

shall be sent away more or less under a cloud. I shall lose friends whom

I love, and whom it had seemed to me that I was called to help even at

the risk of my own soul. However, there it is. If I am not to be a

Carthusian, if I am not to work for sinners in London, I suppose some

other sphere of action will be found for me. I must leave it to Him Who

knows best."

Canon Nicholls bent forward, and held out his long, white hands with an

eager gesture, as though he were wrestling with his infirmity in his

great longing to gain an outlook which would enable him to read a little

further into the souls of men.

"I cannot explain more definitely. It is a case of fighting for a soul,

or rather fighting with a soul against the devil in a terrible crisis.

I don't know what to compare it to. Perhaps it is like performing a

surgical operation while the patient is scratching your eyes out. If I

can leave my own point of view out of sight for the present I can be of

use, but I must let the scratching out of my eyes go on."

Mark went to the church early that evening, as it was his turn to be in

the confessional. One or two people came to confession, and then the

church seemed to be empty. He knelt down to his prayers and soon became

absorbed. To-night he was oppressed in a new way by the sins, the

temptations, and the unutterable weakness of man; his failures; his

uselessness. Nothing else in Art had ever impressed him so much as the

figure of Adam on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. That beautiful

figure, with all the freshness of its primal grace, stretching out its

arms from a new-born world towards the infinite Creator, had expressed,

with extraordinary pathos, the weakness, the failure, almost the

non-existence of what is finite. "I Am Who Am" thundered Almighty Power,

and how little, how helpless, was man!

And then, as Mark, weary with the misery of human life, almost repined

at the littleness of it all, he felt rebuked. Could anything be little

that was so loved of God? If the primal truth, if Purity Itself and Love

Itself could make so amazing a courtship of the human soul, how dared

anyone despise what was so honoured of the King? No, under all the

self-seeking, the impure motives, the horrid cruelties of life, he must

never lose sight of the delicate loveliness, the pathetic aspiration,

the exquisite powers of love that are never completely extinguished. He

must see with God's eyes, if he were to do God's work. And in the

thought that it was, after all, God's work and not his own, Mark found

comfort. He had come into the church feeling the burden on his shoulders

very hard to bear, and now he made the discovery that it was not he who

was carrying it at all; he only appeared to have it laid upon him while

Another bore it for him.

CHAPTER XXXV

THE CONDEMNATION OF MARK

Two excellent and cheerful old persons were engaged in conversation on

the subject of Father Molyneux. The Vicar-General of the diocese, a

Monsignor of the higher, or pontifical rank, had called to see the

Rector of Mark's church, and had already rapidly discussed other matters

of varying importance when he said, leaning back in an old and faded

leather chair:

"What's all this about young Molyneux?"

Both men were fairly advanced in years and old for their age, for they

had both worked hard and constantly for many years on the mission. They

had to be up early and to bed late, with the short night frequently

interrupted by sick calls, and on a Sunday morning they had always

fasted till one o'clock, and usually preached two or even three times on

the same day. They had never known for very many years what it was to be

without serious anxiety on the matter of finance. Their lives had been

models of amazing regularity and self-control. Their recreations

consisted chiefly in dining with each other at mid-day on Mondays, and

spending the afternoon with whist and music. Probably, too, they had

dined with a leading parishioner once or twice in the week.

In politics they were mildly Liberal, more warmly Home Rulers, but they

put above all the interests of the Church. They were, too, fierce

partisans on the controversies about Church music, and had a zeal for

the beauty and order of their respective churches that was admirable in

its minuteness and its perseverance. They both had a large circle of

friends with whom they rejoiced at annual festivities at their Colleges,

and with whom they habitually and freely censured their immediate

authorities. Those who were warmest in their devotion to the Vatican

were often the most inclined to make a scapegoat of a mere bishop. But

now one of these two old friends had been made Vicar-General of the

diocese, and it was likely that the Rector would speak to him with less

than his usual freedom. Lastly, both men had that air of complete

knowledge of life which comes with the habits of a circle of people who

know each other intimately. And neither of them realised in the least

that the minds of the educated laity were a shut book to them.

"Well," said the Rector, and after puffing at his pipe he went on, "we

can hardly get into the church for the crowd, and I am going to put up a

notice to ask ladies to wear small hats--toques; isn't that what they

call them?"

"I heard him once," said the Vicar-General, "and, to tell the truth, it

didn't seem up to much."

"Words," said the Rector; "it's Oxford all over. There must be a new

word for everything. Why, he preached on Our Lady the other day, and I

declare I don't think there were three sentences I'd ever heard before!

And on Our Lady, too! A man must be gone on novelty who wants to find

anything new to say about Our Lady."

"It doesn't warm me up a bit, that sort of thing," said the

Vicar-General. "I like to hear the things I've heard all my life."

"Of course," responded the other, "but you won't get that from our

popular preachers, I can tell you," and he laughed with some sarcasm.

"Is he making converts?"

"Too many, far too many; that's just what I complain of. We shall have a

nice name for relapses here if it goes on like this."

Both men paused.

"You've nothing more to complain of?" asked the Monsignor.

"No--no--" The second "no" was drawn out to its full length. "Of course,

he's unpunctual, and he's often late for dinner. I don't know where he

gets his dinner at all sometimes. And there are always ladies coming to

see him. If there are two in the parlour and another in the dining-room,

and a young man on the stairs, it's for ever Father Molyneux they are

asking for. And, of course, he has too much money given him for the

poor, and we have double the beggars we had last year."

"But," said the other, "you know there's more being said than all that.

There's an unpleasant story, and it's about that I want to ask you.

Well--the same sort of thing as poor Nobbs; you'll remember Nobbs?"

"Remember Nobbs! Why, I was curate with him when I first left the

seminary. Now, there was a preacher, if you like! But it turned his head

completely. Poor, wretched Nobbs! It's a dangerous thing to preach too

well, I'm certain of that."

"Well, it's a danger you and I have been spared," said the Monsignor,

and they both laughed heartily.

Then they got back to the point.

"Well," said the Rector, "there's a lady comes here sometimes who spoke

to me about this the other day. It seems she went to see John Nicholls,

and the poor old blind fellow bit her head off, but she thought she

ought to tell somebody who might put a stop to the talk, and so she came

to me. There's some woman, a very rich Protestant, who gives out openly

that she is waiting till Molyneux announces that he doesn't believe in

the Church, and then they will marry and go to America. Then, another

day Jim Dixon came along, and a friend of his had heard the tale from

some Army man at his Club. It's exactly the way things went on about

Nobbs, you know, beginning with talk like that. Really, if it wasn't for

having seen Nobbs go down hill I shouldn't think anything of it. Young

Molyneux is all straight so far, but so was Nobbs straight at first."

"A priest shouldn't be talked about," said the Monsignor.

"Of course not," said the Rector.

"He has started too young," the Monsignor went on, not unkindly; "it's

all come on in such a hurry; he ought to have had a country mission

first. But my predecessor thought he'd be so safe with you."

"But how can I help it?" asked the other hotly; "I'm sure I've done my

best! You can ask him if I haven't warned him from his very first sermon

that he'd be a popular preacher. I've even tried to teach him to preach.

I've lent him Challoner, and Hay, and Wiseman, and tried to get him out

of his Oxford notions, but he's no sooner in the pulpit than he's off at

a hard gallop--three hundred words to a minute, and such

words!--'vitality,' 'personality,' 'development,' 'recrudescence,'

'mentality'--the Lord knows what! And there they sit and gaze at him

with their mouths open drinking it in as if they'd been starved! No, no;

it won't be my fault if he turns out another Nobbs--poor, miserable old

Nobbs! Now his really were sermons!"

"Well," said the other, in a business-like tone, "I am inclined to think

it would be best for him to take a country mission for a few years. I've

no doubt he is on the square now, and that will give him time to quiet

down a bit. He'll be an older and a wiser man after that, and he could

do some sound, theological reading. Lord Lofton has been asking for a

chaplain, and we must send him a gentleman. I could tell him that

Molyneux had been a little overworked in London, and if he goes down to

the Towers at the end of July, no one will suppose he is leaving for

good, eh?"

"Very well," answered the Rector; "I don't want anything said against

him, you know. I've had many a curate not half as ready to work as this

man."

"No, no; I quite understand. Well, I'll write to him in the course of

the week. And now about this point of plain chant?" And both men forgot

the existence of Mark as they waxed hot on melodious questions.

I can't believe that Jonathan loved David more than the second curate

had come to love Mark Molyneux in their work together. It is good to

bear the yoke in youth, and it is very good to have a hero worship for

your yoke fellow. Father Jack Marny was a young Kelt, blue-eyed,

straight-limbed, fair-haired, and very fair of soul. He would have told

any sympathetic listener that he owed everything to Mark--zeal for

souls, habits of self-denial, a new view of life, even enjoyment of

pictures and of Browning, as well as interest in social science. All

this was gross exaggeration, but in him it was quite truthful, for he

really thought so. He had the run of Mark's room, and they took turns to

smoke in each other's bedrooms, so as to take turns in bearing the

rector's observations on the smell of smoke on the upstairs landing.

Father Marny had a subscription at Mudie's--his only extravagance--and

he always ordered the books he thought Mark wished for, and Mark always

ordered from the London library the books he thought would most interest

Jack. Father Marny revelled in secret in the thought of all that might

have belonged to Mark, and he possessed, of course most carefully

concealed, a wonderful old print he had picked up on a counter, of

Groombridge Castle, exalting the round towers to a preposterous height,

while in the foreground strolled ladies in vast hoops, and some animals

intended apparently for either cows or sheep according to the fancy of

the purchaser.

But what each of the curates loved best was the goodness he discerned in

the other, and the more intimate they became the more goodness they

discerned. The very genuinely good see good, and provoke good by seeing

it, and reflect it back again, as two looking-glasses opposite to each

other repeat each other's light _ad infinitum_.

It was a Monday, and the rector had gone out to dinner, and the two

young men were smoking in the general sitting-room. Father Marny was

looking over the accounts of a boot club, and objurating the handwriting

of the lady who kept them. Mark was in the absolutely passive state to

which some hard-working people can reduce themselves; he had hardly the

energy to smoke. A loud knock produced no effect upon him.

"Lazy brute!" murmured Father Marny, in his affectionate, clear voice,

"can't even fetch the letters." And a moment later he went for them

himself, and having flung a dozen letters over his companion's shoulder,

went back to the accounts.

Ten minutes later he looked up, and gave a little start. He was quick to

see any change in Mark, and he did not like his attitude. He did not

know till that moment how anxious he had been as to the possibility of

some change. He moved quickly forward and stood in front of the deep

chair in which Mark was sitting, leaning forward with his eyes fixed on

the carpet.

"Bad news?" he asked abruptly.

"Bad enough," said Mark, and, very slowly raising his head, he gave a

smile that was the worst part of all the look on his face. Jack Marny

put one hand on his shoulder, and a woman's touch could not have been

lighter.

"It's not----?" he said, and then stopped.

"Yes, it is," Mark answered. "I am to be a domestic chaplain to that

pious old ass, Lord Lofton. It seems I need quiet for study--quiet to

rot in! My God! is that how I am to work for souls?"

It was, perhaps, better for Mark that Jack Marny broke down completely

at the news, for, by the time he had been forced into telling his friend

that it was preposterous to suppose that any man was necessary for God's

work, and that if they had faith at all they must believe that God

allowed this to happen, light began to dawn in his own mind. But he was

almost frightened at the passionate resentment of the Kelt; he saw there

was serious danger of some outbreak on his part against the authorities.

"They won't catch me staying here after you are gone!"

"Much good that would do me," said Mark. "I should get all the blame."

"They must learn that we are not slaves!" thundered the curate, his fair

face absolutely black with wrath.

"We are God's slaves," said Mark, in a low voice, and then there was

silence between them for the space of half an hour.

The door opened and a shrill voice cried out, "There's Tom Turner at the

door asking for Father Mark," and the door was banged to again.

Tom Turner was the very flower of Mark's converts to a good life.

Father Marny groaned at the name.

"Let me see him," he said. "Go out and get a walk."

"I'd rather see him; I don't know how much oftener----"

The sentence was not finished. He had left the room in two strides.

CHAPTER XXXVI

MENE THEKEL PHARES

The more Edmund reflected on the matter the more difficult he found it

to decide what steps to take in order to approach Molly. In the first

impulse he had thought only that here was the chance of serving her, of

proving her friend in difficulty, which he had particularly wished for.

It would make reparation for the past--a past he keenly defended in his

own mind as he had defended it to Molly herself, but yet a past that he

would wish to make fully satisfactory by reparation for what he would

not confess to have been blameworthy. But when he tried to realise

exactly what he should have to tell Molly it seemed impossible. For how

could he meet her questions; her indignant protests? She would become

more and more indignant at the plot that had been carried on against

her, a plot which Edmund had started and had carried on until quite

lately, and which had also until quite lately been entirely financed by

him. Even if he baffled her questions, his consciousness of the facts

would make it too desperately difficult a task for him to assume the

_rôle_ of Molly's disinterested friend now, although in truth he felt as

such, and would have done and suffered much to help her.

Edmund had by nature a considerable sympathy with success, with pluck,

with men or women who did things well. There are so many bunglers in

life, so few efficient characters, and he felt Molly to be entirely

efficient. Even the over-emphasis of wealth in the setting of her life

had been effective; it fitted too well into what the modern world wanted

to be out of proportion. A thing that succeeded so very well could

hardly be bad form. Hesitation, weakness, would have made it vulgar;

hesitation and weakness in past days had often made vulgar emphasis on

rank and power, but in the hands of the strong such emphasis had always

been effective and fitting. There was a kind of artistic regret in

Edmund's mind at the thought that this excellent comedy of life as

played by Molly should be destroyed. And he had come to think it

certainly would be destroyed.

One last piece of evidence had convinced him more than any other.

Nurse Edith had a taste for the dramatic, and enjoyed gradual

developments. Therefore she had kept back as a _bonne bouche_, to be

served up as an apparent after-thought, a certain half sheet of paper

which she had preserved carefully in her pocket-book since the night on

which she had made the copy of Sir David Bright's will. It was the

actual postscript to Sir David's long letter to Rose; the long letter

Nurse Edith had put back in the box and which had remained there

untouched until Molly had taken it out. The postscript would not be

missed, and might be useful. It was only a few lines to this effect:

"P.S.--I think it better that you should know that I am sending a few

words to Madame Danterre to tell her briefly that justice must be done.

Also, in case anyone, in spite of my precautions to conceal it, is

aware that I possessed the very remarkable diamond ring I mention in

this letter, and asks you about it, I wish you to know that I am sending

it direct to Madam Danterre in my letter to her. May God forgive me,

and, by His Grace, may you do likewise."

The sight of David's handwriting, the astonishing verification of his

own first surmise, the vivid memory of Rose unwillingly showing him the

letter and the ring and the photograph she supposed to have been

intended for herself, had a very powerful effect on Edmund Grosse. The

whole story was so clear, so well connected, it seemed impossible to

doubt it. Yet he believed in Molly's innocence without an effort. What

was there to prove that Madame Danterre had not destroyed the will after

Nurse Edith copied it? She had the key and the box within reach, and the

dying, again and again, have shown incalculable strength--far greater

than was needed in order to get at the will and burn it while a nurse

was absent or asleep.

Again, it was to Larrone's interest to destroy that will. They had only

Pietrino's persuasion of Larrone's integrity to set against the

possibility of his having opened the box on his long journey to England,

against the possibility of his having read the will, and destroyed it,

before he gave the box to Molly. He would have seen at once not only

that his own legacy would be lost, but, what might have more influence

with him, he must have seen what a doubtful position he must hold in

public opinion if this came to light. He had been the chief friend and

adviser of Madame Danterre, who had paid him lavishly for his medical

services from her first coming to Florence, and who had made no secret

of the legacy he was to receive at her death. He had been with her at

the last, and was now actually carrying on her gigantic fraud by taking

the box to her daughter. Would it not have been a great temptation to

him to destroy the will while he had no fear of discovery rather than

put the matter in Molly's hands? Lastly came Rose's subtle feminine

suggestion that the will might be in the box but that Molly had never

opened it. Some instinct, some secret fear of painful revelations, might

easily have made her shrink from any disclosures as to her mother's

past. Rose was so often right, and the obvious suggestion, that such a

shrinking from knowledge would have been natural to Rose and unnatural

to Molly, did not occur to the male mind, always inclined to think of

women as mostly alike.

At the same time he was really unwilling to relinquish the _rôle_ of

intermediary. His thoughts had hardly left the subject since the hour of

his talk with Rose, and it was especially absorbing on the day on which

Molly was to give a party, to which he was invited--and invited to meet

royalty. He decided that he must that evening ask his hostess to give

him an appointment for a private talk.

Edmund arrived late at Westmoreland House when the party was in full

swing. He paused a moment on the wide marble steps of the well staircase

as he saw a familiar face coming across the hall. It was the English

Ambassador in Madrid, just arrived home on leave, as Edmund knew. He was

a handsome grey-haired man of thin, nervous figure, and he sprang

lightly to meet his old friend and put his hand on his arm.

"Grosse!" he cried, "well met." And then, in low, quick tones he added:

"What am I going to see at the top of this ascent? This amazing young

woman! What does it mean, eh? I knew the wicked old mother. Tell me, was

she really married to David Bright all the time? Was it Enoch Arden the

other way up? But we must go on," for other late arrivals were joining

them. When they reached the landing the two men stood aside for a

moment, for they saw that it was too late for them to be announced.

Royalty was going in to supper.

A line of couples was crossing the nearest room, from one within. The

great square drawing-room was lit entirely by candles in the sconces

that were part of the permanent decoration. But the many lights hardly

penetrated into the great depths of the pictures let into the walls.

These big, dark canvases by some forgotten Italian of the school of

Veronese, gave the room something of the rich gloom of a Venetian

palace. Beyond a few stacks of lilies in the corners, Molly had done

nothing to relieve its solemn dignity. As she came across it from the

opposite corner, the depths of the old pictures were the background to

her white figure.

She was bending her head towards the Prince who was taking her down--a

tall, fair man with blue eyes and a heavy jaw. Then as she came near the

doorway she raised her head and saw Edmund. There was a strange, soft

light in her eyes as she looked at him. It was the touch of soul needed

to give completeness to her magnificence as a human being. The white

girlish figure in that room fitted the past as well as the present. The

great women of the past had been splendidly young too, whereas we keep

our girls as children, comparatively speaking.

Molly had that combination of youth and experience which gives a

special character to beauty. There was no detailed love of fashion in

her gorgeous simplicity of attire; there was rather something subtly in

keeping with the house itself.

The Prince turned to speak to the Ambassador, and the little procession

stopped.

Edmund was more artistic in taste than in temperament, and he was not

imaginative. But he could not enjoy the full satisfaction of his

fastidious tastes to-night, nor had he his usual facility for speech. He

could not bring himself to utter one word to Molly. They stood for that

moment close together, looking at each other in a silence that was

electric. No wonder that Molly thought his incapacity to speak a

wonderful thing; others, too, noticed it.

"What a bearing that girl has! What movement!" cried the Ambassador, as,

after greeting the first few couples who passed him, he drew Grosse to a

corner and looked at him curiously. But Edmund seemed moonstruck. Then,

in a perfunctory voice, he said slowly.

"What is the writing in that picture?"

"Mene Thekel Phares," said his friend. "My dear Grosse! surely you know

a picture of the 'Fall of Babylon' when you see it? Now let us go where

we shall not be interrupted. Tell me all about this girl with the

amazing bearing and big eyes, whom princes delight to honour, and

Duchesses to dine with! How did she get dear Rose Bright's money?"

Edmund had never disliked a question more.

"I'll tell you all I know," he said unblushingly, "but not to-night, old

fellow. It would take too long."

And to his joy a countess and a beauty seized upon the terribly curious

diplomatist and made him take her down to supper. And they agreed while

they supped exquisitely that the real job dear old Grosse ought to be

given was that of husband to their hostess.

"But then there is poor Rose Bright."

"Lady Rose Bright would not have him when he was rich," he objected.

"No; this will do very nicely. If I am not mistaken (and I'm pretty well

read in human eyes), the lady is willing."

After supper there was dancing. Edmund did not dance. He stood in a

corner, his tall form a little bent, merely watching, and presently he

turned away. He had made up his mind. He would not try to speak to Molly

to-night, and he would not ask her for a talk.

She was dancing as he left the room, and he turned half mechanically to

watch her. It was always an exquisite pleasure to see her dance. He left

her with a curious sense of farewell in his mind. Fate was coming fast,

he knew; he could not doubt that for a moment. He was not the man to

avert it. No one could avert it. It was part of the tragedy that, pity

her as he might, he could not really wish to avert it. He would give no

warning. Some other hand must write "Mene Thekel Phares" on the wall of

her palace of pleasure and success.

Edmund Grosse declined the task.

Molly danced on in the long gallery between its walls of mirrors and

their infinite repetitions of twinkling candles and dancing figures

pleasantly confused to the eye by the delicate wreaths of gold foliage

that divided their panes. In the immeasurable depths of those

reflections the nearest objects melted by endless repetition into dim

distances, and the present dancing figures might seem to melt into a far

past where men and women were dancing also.

Gallery within gallery in that mirrored world, with very little effort

of imagination, might become peopled by different generations. As the

figures receded in space so they receded in time. Groups of human

beings, with all the subtle ease of a decadent civilisation, ceded their

place to groups of men and women who moved with more slowness and

dignity in the middle distance of those endless reflections. And looking

down those avenues of gilded foliage into that fancied past, the old cry

might well rise to the lips: "What shadows we are, and what shadows we

pursue!"

But, whether in the foreground of to-day, or in the secrets that the

mirrors held of a century before, or in the indistinguishable mist of

their greatest depths, wherever the imagination roamed, it found in

every group of human beings a woman who was young and beautiful, and yet

it could come back to the dancing figure of Molly without any shock of

disappointment or disdain.

"But it is daylight!" cried two young men who paused breathless with

their partners by the high narrow windows, at the end of the gallery,

and they threw back the shutters. The growing dawn mingled with the

lights of the decreasing candles, with the infinite repetitions of the

mirror, with the soft music of the last valse.

And Molly bore the light perfectly, as the chorus of praise and thanks

and "good-nights" of the late stayers echoed round her.

"Not 'good-night' but 'good-bye,'" said a very young girl, looking up at

Molly with facile tears rising in her blue eyes. "We go away to-morrow,

and this perfect night is the last!"

CHAPTER XXXVII

MARK ENTERS INTO TEMPTATION

The more he realised Molly's danger, the more he believed in her

innocence--the more anxious Edmund became to find a suitable envoy to

approach her from the enemy's side, and one who, if possible, would

understand his position.

Like most men who have a repugnance to clerical influence he had a great

idea of its power, and a perfect readiness to make use of it. He was

delighted when he remembered having met Mark Molyneux at Molly's house.

The meeting had not been quite a success, but this he did not remember.

Edmund's half-sleepy easy manner had been more cordial, but not quite so

good as usual. He was just too conscious of the strangeness of the fact

that Edmund Grosse should be talking with a "bon petit curé." He knew

Father Molyneux to be Groombridge's cousin, and to have been considered

a man of unusual promise at Oxford, but, all the same, whatever he had

been, he was a priest now, and Grosse had never quite made up his mind

as to his own manner to a priest. He was so practised in dealing with

other people, but not with ecclesiastics. He did not in the least

realise that the slight condescension and uncertainty in his manner,

with all his effort at cordiality, was the outcome of a rather

deeply-seated antagonism to the claims he conceived all priests to make,

in their hearts, on the souls of men. I have known a man, not altogether

unlike Edmund Grosse, to cross the street in London rather than pass a

priest on the same pavement. Grosse would not have been so foolish as

that, but still, it was not surprising that the two men did not get on

particularly well. All that Edmund now remembered of this chance meeting

was Molly's evidently deep interest in the young priest, and he recalled

her saying at the time when she had been much moved by her mother's

cruel letter, that she was going to hear Father Molyneux preach that

evening. From the avowedly anti-clerical Molly, that meant much.

Edmund knew nothing of the recent talk about Mark, although Mrs.

Delaport Green had tried to sigh out some insinuations on the subject in

talking to him. Perhaps he was a less receptive listener than of yore,

when he had more empty spaces in his mind than he had this year. He

received, indeed, a faint impression that Mrs. Delaport Green was

sentimentalising over some disappointment she was suffering under

acutely with regard to the popular preacher, and had felt her motive to

be curiosity to gain information from himself on some point of which he

knew nothing. But if he had been more attentive he might have gained

enough information to make him hesitate to involve poor Mark in Molly's

affairs.

Almost as soon as he had thought of consulting Mark, he proposed the

notion to Rose, who was enthusiastic in its support.

It is not necessary to give his letter to Father Molyneux, which had to

be long and careful, and was written after consultation with Mr.

Murray.

Mr. Murray was quite in favour of an informal interview, and disposed to

agree in the choice of Father Molyneux as ambassador. "I am not afraid

of your letting Miss Dexter know the strength of our case," he said.

"Father Molyneux must judge for himself how far it is wise to frighten

Miss Dexter for her own sake. He is, as I understand, to try to persuade

her to produce the will, and I suppose he will assume that she does not

know of its existence among her mother's papers. This would save her

pride, and you might come to terms if she would produce it. If you fail,

the next course would be for me to insist on an interview, and to carry

things with a high hand. I should say, in effect: 'We are aware that Sir

David Bright made a will on his way to Africa, and we can prove that it

was sent by mistake to your mother, because we have a witness who saw it

in her box. It was in her box when it was handed to Dr. Larrone, and it

has been traced, therefore, into your hands. We have a copy of it which

we can produce if you have destroyed the original, and, if you have not

done so, we can get an order of the court compelling you to produce it.

You cannot deny the fact that the will was sent to Madame Danterre by

mistake, for you have the letter which accompanied it, and we have the

postscript to the letter taken from the box by a witness whom we are

prepared to call. Will you produce the box in which, no doubt, the will

has escaped your notice, or shall we get the order of the court? The

will has, as I have said, been traced into your hands.' I doubt if any

woman (at all events one such as you describe Miss Dexter) would resist,

and no solicitor whom she consulted, and to whom she told the truth,

would advise her to do so--no respectable solicitor, that is to say,

and no prudent one."

When Edmund showed Rose his letter to Father Mark she had only one

criticism to make. She felt that Edmund took too easily for granted that

the priest would be ready to put his finger into so very hot a pie.

Father Mark must be appealed to more earnestly to come to the rescue,

and less as if it were quite obvious that he would be ready to do so as

part of his natural business in life. Edmund agreed to add some

sentences at her suggestion.

It is important to realise Mark's state of mind, at the time when this

strong, additional trial was to come upon him.

With the full approval of his friend, Canon Nicholls, Mark decided not

to take the decree of banishment from London without remonstrance. He

was not astonished at the result of the talk against him. That his one

great enemy should have poisoned the wells so easily was not very

surprising. He could not help knowing that the very keenness and ardour

of his friends had produced prejudice against him. There was, among the

religious circles in London, a perhaps healthy suspicion of hero worship

for popular preachers, and of any indiscreet zeal. The great Religious

Orders knew how to deal with life, and it was safer to have an

enthusiasm for an Order than for an individual. Seculars were the right

people for daily routine and work among the poor, but for a young

secular priest to become a bright, particular star was unusual and

alarming.

Jealousy is the fault of the best men because it eludes their most

vigilant examinations, and, while their energy is taken up with visible

enemies, it dresses itself in a complete and dignified disguise and

comes out either as discretion or zeal or a love of humility.

Mark saw all this less clearly than did the blind Canon, but he realised

it enough not to be surprised at the quick growth of the seed Molly had

sown in well-prepared ground.

But the blow he did not expect came from his own rector. He went to him,

thinking he would back him up in his efforts to get an explanation of

this sudden order, and he was told, between pinches of snuff, that he

had much better do as he was bid without making a fuss, and that he was

being sent to an excellent berth, which was exactly what he needed. The

rector was sorry to lose him certainly, but he thought it was the best

possible arrangement for himself. There was something of grunts and

sniffs between the short phrases that did not soften them. Mark became

speechless with hurt feeling.

It became clearly evident to Canon Nicholls that the rector and one or

two of the older priests who had wind of the matter could not see why

there should be any fuss about it. Young Molyneux was under no cloud;

why should he behave as if it were a disgrace to be chaplain to poor old

Lord Lofton? Was he crying out because London would be in such a bad way

without him? What the Canon could not get them to see was the effect on

public opinion. To send Mark away now was to advertise backbiting until

it might become a real scandal. They could not see beyond their own

immediate circle; if all the priests knew he was really a good fellow

they thought that quite enough. They had a horror of a man making

himself talked of outside, but they had no notion of giving him the

chance to right himself with the outside world. It was much better that

he should go away and be forgotten.

Canon Nicholls had always been of opinion that the secular clergy in

England were more hardly treated than the regulars. They were expected

to have the absolute detachment of monks, without the support that a

Religious Order gives to its subjects. They were given the standards of

the cloister in the seminary, and then tumbled out into life in the

world. No one in authority seemed anxious not to discourage a young

secular priest. To be regular and punctual, to avoid rows, and to keep

out of debt were the virtues that naturally appealed to the approval of

a harassed bishop. But a zeal that put a man forward and brought him

into public notice was likely to be troublesome, and such men were

seldom very good at accounts. The type of young man which Mark

resembled, according to the priests who discussed the question, was not

a popular one among them. As a type it had not been found to wash well.

Canon Nicholls was not popular among them for other reasons, but chiefly

because of a biting tongue. He would let his talk flow without tact or

diplomacy on these questions, and often did far more harm than good, in

consequence. He fairly stormed to one or two of his visitors at the

absurdity of hiding a man away because of unjust slander. It was the

very moment in which he ought to be brought forward and supported in

every way. The fact was that the man was to be sacrificed to the

supposed good of the Church, only no one would say so candidly. Whereas,

in reality, by justice to the man the Church would be saved from a

scandal!

Mark was outwardly very calm, but he was changed. His friends said that

his vitality and earnestness were bound to suffer in the struggle for

self-repression. His sermons were becoming mechanical tasks and the

confessional a weariness. He made his protest, as Canon Nicholls wished,

but after the talk with his rector he knew it was useless. He wrapped

himself in silence, even with Father Jack Marny. He began, half

consciously, to be more self-indulgent in details and the only subject

on which he ever showed animation was a projected holiday in

Switzerland. He once alluded to the possibility of going to Groombridge

for the shooting.

At first he had not allowed Father Marny to take any of his now painful

work among the people he was so soon to leave, but, after a week or two,

he acquiesced. What was the use when he was to leave them for good and

all? It were better they should learn at once to get on without him.

Father Marny, in passionate sympathy, was ready to work himself to death

and acknowledge no fatigue. It was easy to conceal fatigue or anything

else from Mark in his preoccupied state of mind. He showed no interest

when Lord Lofton wrote him a most warmly and tactfully expressed letter

of welcome, in which he told the coming chaplain that he must not

suppose there was not work in plenty to be done for souls in the

country.

"Humbugging old men and women who want pensions and soup and blankets!"

Mark said with unusual irritation, as he flung the letter to his friend.

But to the curate Mark was as much above criticism as a martyr at the

foot of the gallows.

Strangely enough, the first break into this moral fog that was settling

down in his spiritual world was, of all unlikely things, the letter from

Edmund Grosse.

When he got Edmund's letter Mark was sulking--there is no other word for

it--over his answer to Lord Lofton, which ought to have gone several

days ago. Of course he was bound by his mission oath to go where he was

placed, but the authorities might at least have waited to hear from him

before handing him over as if he were a parcel or a Jesuit. He read

Edmund's cramped writing with a little difficulty, and then threw the

three sheets it covered on to the table with a bang, and jumped up.

"Dash it!" he cried, "this is rather too much."

He did not stop to think that Edmund could not have been so idiotic as

to write that letter if he had known of the state of the case between

him and Miss Dexter. It only seemed at the moment that it was another

instance of cruelty and utter unfairness, part of the same treatment he

was receiving, which expected a man to be a plaster saint with no

thought for himself, no natural feelings, no sense of his own

reputation! First of all he was to be buried, torn from his friends,

from his work for souls, from the joy of the Good Shepherd seeking the

lost sheep. He was to lose all he loved and for which he had given up

his life, his career, his position, and, for the first time, he

enumerated among his sacrifices the possession of Groombridge. Then he

blushed for shame--also for the first time. How little _that_ had been,

compared to what he had to do now! What had he to do now? And here the

Little Master made his great mistake. He came out of the fog and shadow,

he came into the light because he thought it was safe now.

What had Mark to do that was so much harder? To submit to authority and

forgive its blunders. He hesitated for a moment; he almost thought it

was that. Then came the light, and he saw the real crux. What he had to

do was to forgive Molly Dexter. He was startled by the revelation, as

men are startled who have been in love without knowing it. He had been

nursing hatred and revenge without knowing it, for, until he had become

bitter at the treatment of the authorities, he had felt no anger against

Molly. She had simply been the patient who would scratch out the eyes of

the surgeon. He was surprised into a quiet analysis of the discovery,

and then his thoughts stood quite still. It was only necessary for a

noble soul to _see_ such a temptation for him to _fight_ it. But he

passed back from that to the whole of the wrath and hurt feeling that he

recognised too. He was angry with those in authority who expected him to

behave like a saint; he had been angry vaguely with Sir Edmund Grosse,

but more with circumstances that also demanded of him that he should

behave like a saint and do the very worst thing for himself and confirm

the calumny against him by acting as Molly's confidential friend! But he

could not be equally angry at the same time with Miss Dexter, with his

own authorities, with Edmund Grosse, and with circumstances. One injury

alone might have been different, but taken together they suggested a

plot and intention. Whose plot? Whose intention?

And the answer was thundered and yet whispered through his

consciousness. Is was God's plot, God's Will, God's demand, that he

should do the impossible and behave like a saint!

Mark had said easily enough in the first noble instinct of bearing his

blow well: "We are God's slaves." But that first light had gradually

been obscured. He had not felt then that the impossible was demanded of

him. He had come to feel it, and to feel it without remembering that

man's helplessness was God's opportunity. Had he forgotten, erased from

the tablets of his mind and heart, all he had loved and trusted most?

Now all was terribly clear. Augustine, in a decadent, delicate age, had

not minced matters, and had insisted that all hope must be placed in Him

Who would not spare the scourge. "Oftentimes," he had cried, "does our

Tamer bring forth His scourge too." Mark took down the old, worn book.

"In Him let us place our hope, and until we are tamed and tamed

thoroughly--that is, are perfected--let us bear our Tamer.... Whereas,

when thou art tamed, God reserveth for thee an inheritance which is God

Himself.... For God will then be _all in all_; neither will there be any

unhappiness to exercise us, but happiness alone to feed us.... What

multiplicity of things soever thou seekest here, He alone will be

Himself all these things to thee.

"Unto this hope is man tamed, and shall his Tamer then be deemed

intolerable? Unto this hope is man tamed, and shall he murmur against

his beneficient Tamer, if He chance to use the scourge?...

"Whether, therefore, Thou dealest softly with us that we be not wearied

in the way, or chastisest us that we wander not from the way, _Thou art

become our refuge, O Lord_."

As Mark read, the pain of too great light was softened to him. What had

been hard, white light, glowed more rosy until it flushed his horizon

with full glory.

It wanted a small space in time, but a mighty change in the spirit,

before Mark read Edmund's letter with a keen wish to enter into its full

meaning, and judge it wisely. Having come to himself, he was, as ever,

ready to give that self away. He was full of a strange energy; he smiled

to feel that the strokes of the lash were unfelt, while consciousness

was lost in love. This was God's anæsthetic. But it thrilled the soul

with vitality, and in no sense but the absence of pain did it suspend

the faculties. He had no doubt, no hesitation, as to what he must do. He

would go to Molly, he must see her at once, but not a word should pass

his lips of what Edmund wanted him to say. Not a moment must be lost.

Who might not betray her danger and destroy her opportunity? Molly must

be brought to do this thing of herself without any admixture of fear,

without any aim or object but to sacrifice all for what was right. He

yearned with utter simplicity that this might be her way out. Let her do

it for herself. Let her do it of herself, thought Mark--not because she

is afraid, not because her vast possessions appear the least insecure.

And the action would be far more noble just because, at the moment of

renunciation, the world would, for the first time, suspect her guilt. To

Mark it seemed now the crowning touch of mercy that the criminal should

be allowed to drink deep of the chalice. "Her own affair"--that was what

the dying mother had said of the unfortunate child to whom she offered

so gross a temptation.

And in the depths of his mind there was the conviction that it was a

particular truth as to this individual soul, that not only would the

heroic be the only antagonist to the base, but that some such moral

revolution alone could be the beginning of cleansing of what had become

foul, and the driving out of the noxious and the vile.

CHAPTER XXXVIII

NO SHADOW OF A CLOUD

It was in the evening, and Edmund was waiting in Rose's drawing-room

until she should come back from a meeting of one of her charitable

committees.

He was walking up and down the room with a face at once very grave and

very alert. Even his carriage during the last few weeks had seemed to

Rose to have gained in firmness and dignity, and perhaps she was right.

Nor had she failed to notice that one or two small, straight pieces of

grey hair could now be seen near the temples. He looked a little older,

a little more brisk, a little more firm, and distinctly more cheerful

since his reverses. It is no paradox to speak of cheerfulness in sorrow,

or to say that the whole nature may be happier in grief than in the days

of apparent pleasure. It is not only in those who have acquired deep

religious peace that this may be true, for even in gaining energy and a

balance in natural action, there may be happiness amidst pain.

Rose came in without seeing that anyone was in the room, and gave a

start when she saw the tall figure by the window. The evening light

showed him a little grey, a little worn in appearance, a little more

openly kindly in the dark eyes. Something that she had fancied dim and

clouded lately--only once or twice, not always--now shone in his face

with its full brightness.

"Has anything happened, Edmund? Have you come to tell me anything?"

He came across the room to her and took her hand in silence, and then

said:

"You look tired. Have you had tea?"

"Oh, never mind tea," she answered. "Do tell me! Seriously, something

has happened?"

"It is nothing of any consequence--nothing that need disturb you in the

least. It is only about my own stupid affairs, and, on the whole, it is

very good news. I have just come from the Foreign Office, and they have

told me there that I am to have that job in India, and that the sooner I

am ready to start the better."

As he spoke he turned from her with a sudden, quick hurt in his heart.

It was, after all, only of great importance to himself. He knew she

would be kindly glad that he had got the post he wanted. Had she not

always urged him to some real work? Had she not pressed him again and

again during the last four years, consciously and unconsciously, to

bring out all his talents and to do a man's work in a man's way? So she

would be simply glad, and she would wave him "God speed," and would, no

doubt, pray for him at those innumerable services she attended, and

write to him long, gentle, feminine letters full of details about all

sorts of matters, good or indifferent, and she would ask about his

health and press him to take care of himself and tell him of any word

that was spoken kindly of him here in England. And she would somehow

manage to know, or think she knew, that he was doing great things in the

East. And so, no doubt, in the two years in which he was away there

would be no apparent break in this very dear intimacy. But what, in

reality, would he know of her inmost feelings, of her loneliness, of her

sufferings, of any repentance that might come to her, any softening

towards himself? He seemed to see all of the two years that were to come

in a flash as he stood silent on one side of the neglected tea-table,

and Rose stood silent, turning away from him on the other.

When he raised his eyes, he almost felt a surprise that the figure, a

little turned away from him, was not dressed in a plain, white frock,

and that the shadows and the flickering sunlight making its way through

the mulberry leaves were not still upon her; for that was how, through

life and in eternity, Rose would be present in the mind of her lover.

Time had gone; it seemed now as nothing. Whatever changes had come

between, he felt as if he saw in the averted face that same expression

of sorrowful denial and gentle resistance that had baffled him now for

over twelve years. It was still that his soul asked something of this

other purer, gentler, more unworldly, more loving soul, which she, with

all her beneficence would not give him. He did no think of the

impracticability of any question of marriage; he did not think in any

definite sense of their relations as man and woman. At other times he

had known so frequently just the overpowering wish for the possession of

the woman he loved best, but now she stood to him as the history of his

moral existence here below, and he felt as if, in missing her, he should

miss the object and crown of his life.

At last silence became intolerable. He moved as though he wanted to

speak and could not, and then he said huskily, almost gruffly:

"It is not 'good-bye' to-day, of course," and then he laughed at the

feebleness of his own words.

Rose turned to him at that, and he was not really surprised to see that

the tears were flowing rapidly over her cheeks--tears so large that they

splashed like big raindrops on the white hands which were clasped as

they hung before her. But that made it no easier. He thought very little

of those tears; he felt even a little bitter at their apparent

bitterness. He hardened at the sight of those tears; they made him feel

that he could leave her with more dignity, more firmness in his own

mind, than he had ever thought would be possible.

"Vous pleurez et vous êtes roi?" He hardly knew that he had muttered the

words as he so often muttered a quotation to himself. But Rose did not

hear them. She was too preoccupied with her own thoughts and feelings to

notice him closely. Ah! if she had but known before what it would be to

lose him! She was horrified as she felt her self-control failing her,

and an enormous agony entering into possession of all her faculties. She

was so startled, so amazed at this revelation of herself. If she had

felt less, she would have thought more for him. She did not think for a

moment what that silent standing by her side meant for him. She knew at

last the selfishness of passion. She wanted him as she had never wanted

anyone or anything before. She could only think of the craving of her

own heart, the extraordinary trouble that possessed it. Those who have

had a passing acquaintance with love, those who have sown brief passages

of love thoughts over their early youth, can form no notion of what

that first surrender meant to Rose. "Too late!" cried the tyrant love,

the only tyrant that can carry conviction by its mere fiat to the

innermost recesses of a nature. "Too late!--it might have been, but not

now; it is all your own doing; you made him suffer once; you are the

only one to suffer now. You are crying now the easy tears of a child,

but there are years and years before you when the tears will not come,

call for them as you may; they cannot go on coming from a broken heart.

They flow away out of the fissures, and then the dryness and barrenness

of daily misery will not let them come again."

"He never cared as I do," thought Rose; "he does not know what it is!"

She called her persecutor "it"; she shrank from its name even now with

an unutterable embarrassment. When she did turn to Edmund it was more as

if to confide to him what she was suffering from someone else; it was so

habitual to her to turn to him. What was the use? what was the use? How

could she use him against himself? No, no; she must, she must control

herself. She must not tell him; she must let him go quite quietly now;

she must make no appeal to the past; he was too generous--she did not

want his generosity. She put her hands to her forehead and pushed the

hair backwards.

"I'm not well, I think," she said; "the room at the meeting was stuffy.

I--I didn't quite understand what you said--I'm glad."

She sank on to a chair, and then got up again.

"I'm glad you've got what you wanted, but I'm startled--no, I mean I'm

not quite well. I don't think I can talk to-day--I don't

understand--I----"

She stood almost with her back to him then.

He was so amazed at her words that he could not speak at all. This was

not sweetness, kindness, pity; this was something else, something

different; it was almost a shock!

"I am so silly," she said, with a most absurd attempt at a natural

voice, "I think I must----" Her figure swayed a little.

Edmund watched her with utter amazement. All his knowledge of women was

at fault, and that child in the white frock--where was she? Where was

that sense of his soul's history and its failure, its mystic tragedy,

just now? Gone, quite gone, for he knew now that that long tragedy was

ended. But Rose did not know it.

He moved, half consciously, a few feet towards the door.

"Rose," he said, in a very low voice, "if it has come at last, don't

deny it! I have waited patiently, God knows! but I don't want it now

unless it is true. For Heaven's sake do nothing in mere pity!"

"But it has come, Edmund; it has come!" she interrupted him, so quickly

that he had barely time to reach her before she came to him.

And yet it had been many years in coming--so many years that he could

hardly believe it now; could hardly believe that the white hands he had

watched so often trembled with delight as they caressed him; could

hardly believe that the fair face was radiant with joy when he, Edmund,

ventured to kiss her; could hardly believe that it was of her own wish

and will that she leant against him now!

"I ought not to have said it was the stuffy room, ought I?"

It was the sweetest, youngest laugh she had ever given. Then she looked

up at the ceiling where the sun flickered a little.

"Edmund, it is better than if I had known under the mulberry tree. Tell

me you forgive me all I have done wrong. I could not," she gasped a

little, "have loved you then as I do now, because I had known no sorrow

then."

And Edmund told her that she was forgiven. But one sin she confessed

gave him, I fear, unmixed delight; she was so dreadfully afraid that she

had lately been a little jealous!

Strange--very strange and unfathomable--is the heart of man. It did not

even occur to him as the wildest scruple to be at all afraid that he had

been lately a little, ever so little, less occupied with the thought of

her. No shadow of a cloud rested on the great output of a strong man's

deep affection.

CHAPTER XXXIX

"WITHOUT CONDITION OR COMPROMISE"

It was on the same evening that Mark succeeded in seeing Molly. He had

failed the day before, but at the second attempt he succeeded.

It was the first time he had entered Westmoreland House, and he had

never, even in the autumn weeks when Miss Dexter had been most cordial

to him, tried to see her except by her own invitation. Altogether the

position now was as embarrassing as it is possible to conceive. He had

been her confidant as to a crime for which the law sees no kind of

palliative, no possible grounds for mercy. As he greeted her it wanted

little imaginative power to feel the dramatic elements in the picture.

Molly was standing in the middle of the great drawing-room dressed in

something very white and very beautiful. At any other moment he must

have been impressed by the subdued splendour of the room, and the grace

and youth of the dominating figure in the midst. Mark was too absorbed

to-day in the spiritual drama which he must now force to its conclusion

to realise that he had also come to threaten the destruction of Molly's

material world and all the glory thereof. He had, too, so far forgotten

himself, that the mischief Molly had wrought against him had faded into

the background of his consciousness. His absorbing anxiety lay in the

extreme difficulty of his task. It would need an angel from Heaven,

gifted too with great knowledge of human nature, to accomplish what he

meant to attempt. First he would throw everything into the desperate

endeavour to make her give up the will simply and entirely from the

highest motives. But what possibility was there of success? Why should

he hope that, just because he called and asked her for it, she would

give up all that for which she had sold her soul? He could not feel that

he was a prophet sent by God from whose lips would fall such inspired

words that the iron frost would thaw and the great depths of her nature

be broken up. In fact, he felt singularly uninspired, and very much

embarrassed. And when he had tried the impossible (he said to himself),

and had given her the last chance of going back on this ugly fraud from

nobler motives than that of fear, and had failed--he must then enter on

the next stage and must merge the priest's office in that of the

ambassador. He must bring home to her that what she clung to was already

lost, and that nothing but shame and disgrace lay before her. He had the

case, as presented by Sir Edmund's letter in all its convicting

simplicity, clearly in his mind--quite as clearly as the facts of

Molly's own confession to himself. It would not be difficult to crush

the criminal, to make her see the hopeless horror of the trial that must

follow unless she consented to a compromise. But it was the completeness

of her defeat that he dreaded the most; it was for that last stage of

his plan that he was gathering unconsciously all his nerve-power

together. He seemed to hear with ominous distinctness her words at their

last meeting: "If I can't go through with it (which is quite possible)

I shall throw up the sponge and get out of this world as soon as I can."

That had been spoken without any sort of fear of detection, without the

least suspicion that she would have no choice in the matter of giving up

her ill-gotten wealth. What he dreaded unutterably was the despair that

must overpower her as he developed the long chain of evidence against

her. As he came into her presence, overwhelmed with these thoughts, he

was also anxiously recalling two mental notes. He must make her clearly

understand that he had not betrayed her by one word or hint to Sir

Edmund Grosse or any living human being; and secondly, he thought it

very important to impress upon her that Sir Edmund and Lady Rose were of

opinion that Larrone had suppressed the will or that Molly had never

opened the box which contained it--were, in fact, of any or every

opinion except that Molly was guilty of crime. For the rest he could, at

this eleventh hour, hardly see anything clearly, and as he shook hands

with Miss Dexter an unutterable longing to escape came over him. Molly's

greeting was haughty--almost rude--but that seemed to him natural and

inevitable. He made some comment on a political event which she did not

pretend to answer, and then as if speech were almost impossible, he

actually murmured that the weather was very hot.

Then he became silent and remained so. For quite a minute neither spoke.

Molly was not naturally silent, naturally restrained. She moved uneasily

about the room; she lit a cigarette, and threw it away again. At last

she stood in front of him.

"What made you come to-day?" she asked.

Her large restless eyes looked full of anger as she spoke.

"I came to-day partly because I am going away very soon, so I thought

that it might be----" He hesitated.

"But where are you going?" Molly asked abruptly.

"I am to take a chaplaincy at Lord Lofton's."

"And your preaching?" cried Molly in astonishment.

"Is not wanted," said Mark.

"And your poor?"

"Can get on without me."

"You are to be buried in the country?" she cried in indignation; "you

are to leave all the people you are helping? But what a horrible shame!

What,"--she suddenly turned away as a thought struck her--"what can be

the reason?"

"It seems," he said very quietly, "that I have been foolish; people are

talking, things are said against me, and things should not be said

against a priest. But I did not come here to talk about myself. I came

here----" He paused.

Molly sat down close to the empty fireplace, and was bending over it,

her very thin figure curiously twisted, and one foot twitching

nervously.

"You are going away," she said suddenly, "and it is my doing. I did not

know I was doing that; it felt as if hitting at you were the only way to

defend myself. Good God! I shall have a lot to answer for!"

She did not turn round; she crouched lower on the low chair and

shuddered.

"And you," she went on in a low voice, "you want to save my soul! I have

always been afraid you would get the best of it, and now I have

destroyed your life's work. Did you know it was I who was talking

against you?"

"I did."

"And that I have said everything I dared to say against you ever since I

told you my secret?"

"Yes; more or less I knew."

"Why didn't you tell your authorities the truth long ago?"

"How could I?"

Molly made no answer. She got up in silence and took a key from her

pocket and moved toward a small bureau between the windows. She unlocked

the lower drawer and took out a packet of papers, and in the middle of

this packet was an envelope in which lay the key of the room upstairs.

Her movements were slow but unhesitating, and when she left the room

Mark had not the slightest idea of what she would do. If he had seen her

face as she slowly mounted the great well staircase he might have

understood.

How simple it all was. She reached the top of the many steps with little

loss of breath; she turned to the right into the dark passage that led

to her own room, passed her own door, and put the key in the lock of the

one next to it. She knew so exactly which box she sought, though she had

never seen it since the day when Dr. Larrone brought it to her. Although

she had actually come in the cab that brought the small boxes from the

flat, she had succeeded in not recognising that one among the number

heaped up together. She knew exactly where it stood now, and how many

things had been piled above the boxes from the flat with seeming

carelessness, but by her orders.

The shutters were closed, but she could have found that box in inky

darkness, and now a ray from between the chinks fell upon it. She did

not think now of how often she had told herself that she did not know

what the box was like. Now it seemed to have been the only box she had

ever known in her life. The cases on the top of it were heavy, and Molly

had to strain herself to move them, but she was very strong, and every

reserve of muscular power was called out unconsciously to meet her need.

She did not know that her hands were covered with dust, and that blood

was breaking through a scratch over the right thumb made by a jagged

nail.

When she came back into the drawing-room, Father Molyneux was sitting

with his back towards her, looking with unseeing eyes into the trees of

the park. She moved towards him and held out a long envelope.

"Take it away," she said, "If I have ruined your life, you have ruined

mine."

She moved with uncertain steps to the chimney-piece, leant upon it, and,

turning round, looked wildly at the envelope in his hands.

"Why didn't you come for it before?" she asked him.

Mark could not answer. He was absolutely astonished at what had

happened. He could hardly believe that he held in his hand a thing of

such momentous importance. He had nerved himself for a great fight, but

he had not known what he should say, how he should act, and

then--amazing fact--a few minutes after he came into the room, and

without his having even asked for it, the will was put into his hands!

Nothing had been said of conditions or compromise; she only asked the

amazing question why he had not come for it _before_!

"You were right," she mused, "right to leave me alone. I wonder, do you

remember the words that have haunted me this summer?--Browning's words

about the guilty man in the duel:

'Let him live his life out,

Life will try his nerves.'

It has tried my nerves unbearably; I could not go on, I have not the

strength. I might have had a glorious time if I had been a little

stronger. As it is, it's not worth while."

It is impossible to convey the heavy dreariness of outlook conveyed by

her voice and manner. There seemed no higher moral quality in it all.

"Half a dozen times I have nearly sent for you. But"--she did not

shudder now, or make the restless movements he had noticed when he first

came in: Molly had regained the stillness which follows after

storms--"as soon as you are gone I shall be longing to have it back

again. Men have done worse things than I have for thirty thousand a

year! It won't be easy to be a pauper; I think it would be easier to

kill myself."

She was silent again, and Mark could not find one word that he was not

afraid to say--one word that might not quench the smoking flax.

"I had to give it to you without waiting to talk of the future, or I

might not have given it at all. But I should be glad if the case could

be so arranged that my mother's name and my own should not be dragged in

the mud. It is only an appeal for mercy--nothing else." Her voice

trembled almost into silence.

"I think that is all safe," said Mark. "I think if you will leave it all

in my hands I can get better conditions for you than you suppose now.

They will be only too glad."

"But I gave it to you without conditions." Her manner for the moment was

that of a child seeking reassurance.

"Thank God! you did," he cried, with an irrepressible burst of sympathy.

"It's not much for a thief to have done, is it? But now I should like to

do it all properly. Tell me; ought I to come away from here to-day, and

give everything I have here to Lady Rose? If I ought, I will!"

"No, certainly not," said Mark. "I have been asked to offer you liberal

conditions if you would agree to a compromise. I said they had come to

quite the wrong person. No, no, don't think I told them. They have fresh

evidence that there was a will, and they believe they know that

important papers were brought to you by Dr. Larrone when your mother

died."

"And you came to frighten me with this?" There was a touch of reproach

in her tone.

"No, I came, hoping you would give me the paper, as you have done,

without knowing this."

Evidently this news impressed Molly deeply, but she did not want to

discuss it. Presently she said:

"I am glad you came in time before I was frightened. How you have wanted

to make me save my soul! You have helped me very much, but I cannot save

my soul."

"But God can," said Mark.

"You see," she went on, "I never know what I am going to do--going to

be--next. Imagine my being a thief! It seems now almost incredible. And

I don't know what may come next."

For a second she looked at him with wild terror in her eyes.

"Think how many years I have before me. How can I hope that I----?"

"You will do great, great good," said Mark, with emotion.

She shook her head.

"David committed a worse sin than yours."

Molly smiled, a little, incredulous, grey smile, for a moment.

"I may be good to-day. I may be full of peace and joy even to-night--but

to-morrow? You told me once that I should only know true joy if I had

been humbled in the dust. I am low enough now, but the comfort has not

come yet, and, even if God comforts me, it won't last. I shall still be

I, and life is so long."

"You must trust Him--you must indeed. He will find a solution. You are

exhausted now with the victory you have gained. Rest now, and then do

the good things you have done before. Trust in the higher side of your

character; God gave it to you. Believe me, He has called you to great

things."

As he spoke she covered her face with her hands, and a deep blush of

shame rose from her neck to her forehead, visible through the thin,

white fingers.

"I suppose He will find a way out. As I can't understand how you have

cared so much to save my soul, I suppose I can understand His love still

less. Must you go? You will pray for me, I know."

She held out her hand with a look of generous appeal to his forgiveness.

"God bless you!" he said, with complete sympathy, and then he went away

to seek an interview with Sir Edmund Grosse.

Molly sank down on a low seat by the window. Then she went slowly

upstairs, dragging her feet a little from fatigue, and took out of the

tin box the packet of very old letters. She burned them one by one, with

a match for each, kneeling in front of the empty fireplace in her

bed-room. They told the story of her mother's attempt to persuade Sir

David of their marriage during his illness in India. It was not a pretty

story--one of deceit and intrigue. It should disappear now.

Then she sat down in a deep chair in the window. She stayed very still,

curled up against the cushion behind her, her eyes fixed on the ground.

She was hardly conscious of thought; she was trying to recall things

Mark had said, murmuring them over to herself. She was trying not to

sink into the depths of humiliation and despair. It was a blind clinging

to a vague hope for better things, with a certain torpor of all her

faculties.

Then gradually things in the vague gloom became definite to her. "No,"

she said to them with entreaty, "not to-night. My life is only just

dead. I am tired by the shock--it was so sudden--only let me rest till

morning, and in the morning I will try to face it."

She had, it seemed, quite settled this point; the present and the future

were to be left; a pause was absolutely necessary. Then followed quickly

the sharp pang of a fresh thought. It was not in her power to make

things pause. She could not make a truce by calling it a truce. If she

did not realise things now and act now herself, others would come upon

the scene. Even to-night Sir Edmund Grosse might know. She shivered.

Perhaps he was being told now. It would be insufferable to endure his

kindness prompted by Rose's generous forgiveness. But ought she to find

anything unbearable? Was she going to revolt at the very outset? She was

not trained in spiritual matters, but it seemed to her that any revolt

would betray a want of reality in her reparation, and in this great

change of feeling she wanted above all things to be real. She tried to

face what must come next. How could she hand over Westmoreland House? It

could not be done as quietly as she had handed that letter to Father

Mark. The house had been bought with the great lump sum Madame Danterre

had accumulated in Florence--much of that money had been put in the bank

before Sir David died. Perhaps if they were ready to come to terms, as

Father Mark had said, an arrangement would be suggested in which Molly

would not be expected to refund what she had spent, and would have the

possession of Westmoreland House and its contents. The sale would

realise enough to save her from actual want, and yet she would not be

receiving a pension from Lady Rose. Her mind got out of gear and flashed

through these thoughts until, unable to check it in any way, she burst

into tears. She felt the self-deception of such plans with physical

pain. What was that money in the bank at Florence but blackmail gathered

in during Sir David's life? "Why cannot I be straight even now?" she

whispered. She was still sitting on the couch with one leg drawn up

under her, gazing intently at the ground. No, the only money she

possessed was £2000 invested at 3½ per cent. "£70 a year--that is

less than I have given Carey, or the cook, or the butler."

The fact was that while her heart and soul had gone forward in dumb pain

in utter darkness with the single aim of undoing the sin done, the mind

still lagged and reasoned. This is a peculiar agony, and Molly had to

drink of that agony.

Gradually and mercilessly her reason told her that an arrangement with

Lady Rose, the appearance of having the right of possession in

Westmoreland House, the readiness of all concerned to bury the story,

and the possession of a fair income, would make it possible to live in

her own class quietly but, if tactfully, with a good repute. Then the

thought of any kind of compromise became intolerable to her, and she

realised that it was a fancy picture, not a real temptation.

To pretend that Westmoreland House was her own she could not do, but

what was the alternative? Dragging poverty and shame, and with no

opportunity for hiding what had passed, for living it down. Even if she

did the impossible to her pride and consented to receive a good

allowance from Lady Rose, it would not be at all the same in the world's

view as the dignified income that could be raised from Westmoreland

House, and from her mother's jewels and furniture. Her fingers

unconsciously touched the pearls round her neck. Surely she need not

speculate as to how her mother obtained the magnificent jewels which she

had worn up to the end? Then more light came--hard and cold, but clear.

If Molly had been innocent these things might have been so, but Molly

had committed a fraud on a great scale. It would be by the mercy of the

injured that she would be spared the rigours of the law. It was by the

supreme mercy of God that she had had the chance of making the sacrifice

before it was forced from her. And could she shrink from mere ordinary

poverty, from a life such as the vast majority of men and women are

living on this earth? She did not really shrink in her will. It was only

a mechanical movement of thought from one point to another. Was it much

punishment for what she had done to be very poor? Would it not be better

to be unclassed--to live among people who help each other much because

they have little to give? Would it not be the way to do what Father Mark

had said she should try to do--those good things she had done before?

She could nurse, she could watch, she was able to do with little sleep.

She would be very humble with the sick and suffering now. And it would

not surely be wrong to go and find such a life far away from where she

had sinned? She began to wonder if she need stay and live through all

the complications of the coming days. Must it be the right thing to stay

because it was the most unbearable? She thought not. There are times

when recklessness is the only safety. If she did not burn her ships now

she could not tell what temptations might come. But she would not let it

be among her motives that thus she would thereby escape unbearable pity

from Lady Rose and the far sterner magnanimity of Edmund Grosse. She

would act simply; she would ask Rose a favour; she would ask her to

provide for Miss Carew.

Half consciously again her hands went to her throat. She unclasped the

pearl necklace that Edmund had seen on Madame Danterre's withered neck

in the garden at Florence. She slipped off four large rings, and then

gathered up a few jewels that lay about. "One ought not to leave

valuables about," she thought, and she did not know that she added

"after a death."

If Miss Carew had been in the room she would probably not have

understood that anything special was going on. Molly moved quietly

about, collecting together on a little table by the cupboard, rings,

brooches, buckles, watches--anything of much value. She sought and found

the key of the little safe in the wardrobe and put away these objects

with the large jewel cases already inside it. She also put with them her

cheque book and her banker's book. A very small cheque book on a

different bank where the interest of the £2000 had not been drawn on for

six months, she put down on her writing table. Then she looked round the

room. Was there nothing there really her own, and that she cared to keep

either for its own sake or because it had belonged to someone she had

loved? An awful sense of loneliness swept over her as she looked round

and could think of nothing. Each beautiful thing on walls or tables that

she looked at seemed repulsive in its turn, for it had either belonged

to Madame Danterre or been bought with her money. There was not so much

as a letter which she cared ever to see again. She had burnt Edmund's

few notes when she first came to Westmoreland House.

She had once met a woman who had lost everything in a fire. "I have

everything new," she wailed, "nothing that I ever had before--not a

photograph, not a prayer-book, nor an old letter. I don't feel that I am

the same person." The words came back now. "Not the same person," and

suddenly a sense of relief began to dawn upon her.

"Alone to land upon that shore

With not one thing that we have known before."

Oh, the immensity of such a mercy! That hymn had made her shiver as a

child; how different it seemed now! Molly knelt down by the couch, and

her shoulders trembled as a tempest of feeling came over her. Criminals

hardened by long lives of fraud have been known to be happier after

being found out--simply because the strain was over. They had destroyed

their moral sense. Molly's conscience was alive, though torn, bleeding,

and debased. She could not be happy as they were, but yet there was the

lifting of the weight as of a great mountain rolled away. She was afraid

of the immense sense of relief that now seemed coming upon her. Could

she really become free of the horrible Molly of the last months--this

noxious, vile, lying, thieving woman? What an awful strain that woman

had lived in! She had told Mark that what frightened her was the thought

that she would still be herself. She longed now to cut away everything

that had belonged to her. Might she not by God's grace, in poverty and

hard work, with everything around her quite different from the past,

might she not quite do to death the Molly who had lived in Westmoreland

House? The cry was more passionate than spiritual perhaps, but the

longing had its power to help. She rose and again moved quietly about

the room of the dead, bad woman, which must be left in order for the new

owners. She put some things together--what was necessary for a night or

two--and felt almost glad that she had a comb and brush she had not yet

used. There was a bag with cheap fittings Mrs. Carteret had given her as

a girl, which would hold all she needed. And then she remembered that

she had something she would like to take away; it was a nurse's apron,

and in its pocket a nurse's case of small instruments. They were what

she used when nursing with the district nurse in the village at home.

Then she sat down and wrote a cheque and a note, and proceeded to take

them downstairs. The cheque was for £30 out of the little Dexter cheque

book, and the note was an abrupt little line to tell a friend that she

could not dine out that night. She "did not feel up to it" was the only

excuse given, and a furious hostess declared that Miss Dexter had become

perfectly insufferable. She seemed to think that she could do exactly as

she chose because she was absurdly rich.

The butler was able to give Molly £30 in notes and cash, and it was his

opinion that she wanted the money for playing cards that night. Molly

crept upstairs again with a foreign Bradshaw in her hand. She looked out

the train for the night boat to Dieppe. It left Charing Cross at 9.45.

She had chosen Dieppe for the first stage of her journey--of which she

knew not the further direction--for two reasons. The first was because

she knew that she ought to stay within reach if it were necessary for

her to do business with her own or Lady Rose's solicitors. She was

determined not to give any trouble she could avoid giving, in the

business of handing over that which had never belonged to her. At this

time of year the journey to Dieppe would be no difficulty, and she

wanted to go there rather than to Boulogne or any other French port,

because she had the address of a very cheap and clean _pension_ in which

Miss Carew had passed some weeks before coming to live with Molly in

London. From that _pension_ Molly could write the letters she felt

physically incapable of writing to-night. The only note she determined

to write at once was to Carey, asking her to remain at Westmoreland

House and to tell the servants that Miss Dexter had gone abroad. She

told her that she had gone to the _pension_ at Dieppe, but earnestly

insisted that she should not follow her. She begged her to do nothing

before getting a letter that she would write to her at once on arriving

at Dieppe. She also asked her to keep the key of the safe which she

enclosed in her letter. Molly sealed the letter, and then felt some

hesitation as to when and how to give it to Miss Carew. She finally

decided to send it by a messenger boy from the station when it would be

too late for Miss Carew to follow her, and when it would still be in

time to prevent any astonishment at her not returning home that night.

Miss Carew, thinking that Molly had gone out to dinner, came into her

bed-room to look for a book. The night was hot and oppressive, but no

one had raised the blinds since the sun had set, and the room was so

dark that she did not at once see Molly. She started nervously, half

expecting one of Molly's impatient and rude exclamations on being

disturbed, and, with an apology, was going away when Molly said gently:

"Stay a minute, Carey; I'm not going to dine out to-night."

"But there is no dinner ordered, and I have just had supper. I am going

out this evening to see a friend."

"Never mind," Molly interrupted, "I can't eat anything. I am going out

for a drive in a hansom in the cool. Would you mind saying that I shall

not want the motor?"

"My dear! are you not well?"

"Not very." And suddenly Miss Carew began to read the great change in

her face. "It has none of it been very good for me, Carey; you have been

quite right. This house and all was a mistake. You have never said it,

but I have seen it in your eyes. And it has not even been in quite good

taste for me to make such a splash--you thought that too. I'm going to

stop it all now, dear, and probably the house will be sold; it's been an

unblest sort of thing."

Miss Carew stared. The tone was so different from any she had ever heard

in Molly's voice; it was very gentle, but exhausted, as if she had been

through an acute crisis in an illness.

"Carey dear, you have always been so kind to me, and I have been very

unkind to you. You will have to know things that will make you hate and

despise me to-morrow. But would you mind giving me one kiss to-night?"

Miss Carew was very nervous at this request, but happily all the best

side of her was roused by something in Molly that, in spite of a vast

difference, recalled the Molly of seven years ago when she had first

seen her. It was a real kiss--a kind of pact between them.

"I wonder if she will ever wish to do the same again!" thought Molly.

Then Miss Carew left her and she called the maid, who brought at her

bidding a long black cloak and a small black toque--insignificant

compared to anything else of Molly's.

The mistress of Westmoreland House drove away in a hansom, with a bag in

her hand, at twenty minutes past seven.

There is a small house with a little chapel attached to it in a road in

Chelsea where some Frenchwomen, who were exiled from their own country,

have come to dwell. It is built on Sir Thomas More's garden, and it

possesses within its boundaries the mulberry tree under which the

chancellor was sitting when they came to fetch him to the Tower. It is a

poor little house with very poor inmates, and a poor little chapel. But

in that chapel night and day, without a moment's break, are to be found

two figures (when there are not more) dressed in plain brown habits and

black veils. And on the altar there is always a crowd of lighted

candles, in spite of the poverty of the chapel. It is a very small

chapel and oddly shaped. The length of the little building is from north

to south, and the altar is to the east. There are but few benches, but

they run the full length of the building. Strange things are known by

these women, who never go farther than the small garden at the back, of

the life of the town about them. Some men and more women get accustomed

to coming daily into the chapel with its unceasing exposition, and to

love its silence and its atmosphere of rest and peace. Some never make

themselves known; others sometimes ask to see a nun, and thus gradually

these recluses come to know memorable secrets in human lives.

Molly had often been there in the weeks which she had afterwards called

"my short fit of religious emotion." She chose to go there to-night, to

spend there her last hour in London.

The little chapel was fairly cool, and through a door very near the

altar, open to the garden, came the scent of mignonette on the air.

Besides the motionless figures at the altar-rail there was no one else

in the chapel.

At eight o'clock two small brown figures came in and knelt bowed down in

the middle of the sanctuary. The two who had finished their watch rose

and knelt by the side of those who relieved guard. Then the four rose

together, and the two newcomers took up their station, and the others

left them. And the incessant oblation of those lives went on. What a

vast moral space lay between their lives and Molly's! What a contrast!

Molly had had no home, but they had given up their homes for this. Molly

had pined in vain for human love; they had turned away from it. Molly

had rebelled against all restraints; they had chosen these bonds. Molly

had sinned, against even the world's code, for love of the world; and

they had rejected even the best the world could give.

Was it unjust, unfair that the boon they asked for in return was given

to them?

If, on the one hand, Molly had inherited evil tendencies and had fallen

on evil circumstances, does it seem strange that she could share in good

as well as in evil?

It is easy to take scandal at Molly's inherited legacy of evil

tendencies. It is easy to take scandal at the facility of her

forgiveness. The two stumbling-blocks are in reality the two aspects of

one truth, that no human being stands alone and that each gains or

suffers with or by his fellows.

The sinless women pleaded for sinners in a glorious human imitation of

the Divine pleading. And the exuberant vitality poured by the Conqueror

of death into the human race, flowing strongly through that tiny chapel,

had carried the little, thin, stagnant stream of Molly's soul into the

great flood of grace that purifies by sorrow and by love.

Molly knelt in one of the back benches with her eyes fixed on the

monstrance, in a very agony of sorrow and self-abasement. I would not if

I could analyse that penitence. Happily as life goes on we shrink more,

not less, from raising even the most reverent gaze on the secret places

of the soul. We do not know in what form, if in any form at all, and not

rather, in a light without words, the Divine Peace reached her. Was it,

"Go in peace, thy sins are forgiven thee?" Or was it perhaps, "This day

shalt thou be with Me in Paradise?" We cannot tell. Only the lay-sister

who saw Molly go out with the little black bag in her hand said

afterwards that the lady had seemed happy.

THE END.

_A Selection from the Catalogue of_

G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS

Complete Catalogues sent on application

"_A work of absorbing interest_"

THE SOCIALIST

BY GUY THORNE

Author of

"WHEN IT WAS DARK," "A LOST CAUSE," ETC.

"A story that leads one on by its boldness, its vigours, its interesting

realism of both ducal splendour and evil squalor, and by the individual

interests it attaches to social phases and problems. _The Socialist_

contains plenty of dramatic description and intensely studied character

to remind one of _When it Was Dark_ and other well staged and

effectively managed story-dramas from the same busy and clever

pen."--_The Dundee Advertiser_.

"A work of absorbing interest dealing with one of the burning questions

of the day in a manner alike entertaining and instructive. Mr. Thorne

has taken considerable pains to explain the real meaning of Socialism as

understood and taught by leaders of what may be styled the higher Social

movement. We congratulate the author on having produced a first-class

novel full of feeling and character, and with an eminently useful

mission."--_The Irish Independent_.

_Crown 8vo. Fixed price, $1.35 net_

G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS

NEW YORK LONDON

"_A story that warms every reader's heart and makes him regret that he

has reached the end._"

Old Rose and Silver

By MYRTLE REED

Author of "A Spinner in the Sun," "The Master's Violin," etc.

NOT a "problem," "detective," or a "character study" story. It does not

contain a morbid line. Just a charming, pure, altogether wholesome love

story, full of delicate touches of fancy and humor. A book that leaves a

pleasant taste in the memory, and one that people will find most

appropriate as a dainty gift.

With Frontispiece in Color by

WALTER BIGGS

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G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS

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"_Bound to be one of the most popular novels of the year_"

THE WIVING OF LANCE CLEAVERAGE

BY ALICE MACGOWAN

Author of "JUDITH OF THE CUMBERLANDS," "RETURN," "LAST WORD," ETC.

By its stirring dramatic appeal, its varied interest, its skilful

artistry, Miss MacGowan's new Tennessee mountain story marks a long step

in advance of her earlier novels. It is an interesting company that is

brought together in this book--notably the proud high-spirited mountain

beauty who is the heroine, and the bold and fiery young hero, who will

surely stand high in the good graces of readers of the tale--and a

company of distinct types drawn with a graphic and spirited hand, a

company moved by strong passions--love, and hate too, green jealousy and

black revenge.

With Illustrations in Color by ROBERT EDWARDS

_Fixed price, $1.35 net_

G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS

NEW YORK LONDON

_By the author of "The Country House"_

FRATERNITY

BY JOHN GALSWORTHY

Author of "THE MAN OF PROPERTY," "VILLA RUBEIN," ETC.

"The foundation of Mr. Galsworthy's talent, it seems to me, lies in a

remarkable power of ironic insight combined with an extremely keen and

faithful eye for all the phenomena, on the surface of the life he

observes. These are the purveyors of his imagination, whose servant is a

style clear, direct, sane, illumined by a perfectly unaffected

sincerity. It is the style of a man whose sympathy with mankind is too

genuine to allow him the smallest gratification of his vanity at the

cost of his fellow creatures, ... sufficiently pointed to carry deep his

remorseless irony, and grave enough to be the dignified vehicle of his

profound compassion. Its sustained harmony is never interrupted by those

bursts of cymbals and fifes which some deaf people acclaim for

brilliance. Mr. Galsworthy will never be found futile by anyone and

never uninteresting by the most exacting."

MR. JOSEPH CONRAD in _The Outlook_.

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