Ten minutes later, leaving their car outside, Garth and Sara walked boldly up to the inn of which he had spoken.  The door stood open, and a light was burning in the coffee-room.  Evidently some one had just arrived.

Garth glanced into the room, then, standing back, he motioned Sara to enter.

Sara stepped quickly over the threshold and then paused, swept by an infinite compassion and tenderness almost maternal in its solicitude.

Molly was sitting hunched up in a chair, her face half hidden against her arm, every drooping line of her slight young figure bespeaking weariness.  She had taken off her hat and tossed it on to the table, and now she had dropped into a brief, uneasy slumber born of sheer fatigue and excitement.

“Molly!”

At the sound of Sara’s voice she opened big, startled eyes and stared incredulously.

Sara moved swiftly to her.

“Molly dear,” she said, “I’ve come to take you home.”

At that Molly started up, broad awake in an instant.

“You?  How did you come here?” she stammered.  Then, realization waking in her eyes:  “But I’m not coming back with you.  We’ve only stopped for petrol.  Lester’s outside, somewhere, seeing about it now.  We’re driving back to the car.”

“Yes, I know.  But you’re not going on with Mr. Kent”—­very gently—­“you’re coming home with us.”

Molly drew herself up, flaring passionate young defiance, talking glibly of love, and marriage, and living her own life—­all the beautiful, romantic nonsense that comes so readily to the soft lips of youth, the beckoning rose and gold of sunrise—­and of mirage—­which is all youth’s untrained eyes can see.

Sara was getting desperate.  The time was flying.  At any moment Kent might return.  Garth signaled to her from the doorway.

“You must tell her,” he said gruffly.  “If Kent returns before we go, we shall have a scene.  Get her away quick.”

Sara nodded.  Then she came back to Molly’s side.

“My dear,” she said pitifully.  “You can never marry Lester Kent, because—­because he has a wife already.”

“I don’t believe it!” The swift denial leaped from Molly’s lips.

But she did believe it, nevertheless.  No one who knew Sara could have looked into her eyes at that moment and doubted that she was speaking not only what she believed to be, but what she knew to be, the ugly truth.

Suddenly Molly crumpled up.  As, between them, Garth and Sara hurried her away to the car, there was no longer anything of the regal young goddess about her.  She was just a child—­a tired, frightened child whose eyes had been suddenly opened to the quicksands whereon her feet were set, and, like a child, she turned instinctively and clung to the dear, familiar people from home, who were mercifully at hand to shield her when her whole world had suddenly grown new and strange and very terrible. . . .