“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