“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 cure.”  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.