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.