at he was trying to
set her mind against marriage with Edgar Tonmore. If he only knew how
little danger there was of that! And under Edmund's influence she
decided to offer herself for a visit of two or three weeks to Mrs.
Carteret, in the old and much disliked home of her childhood. It would
look right; it would give a certain dignity to her position after the
breakdown of the Delaport Green alliance, and it was always a great
mistake to break with natural connections. So far Edmund Grosse; and in
Molly's mind it ran something like this: "He wants me to stand well with
the world, and I will do this, intolerable as it is, to please him. He
likes to think that I have some nice relations, and so I must try to be
friendly with Aunt Anne Carteret, though that is the hardest part. And
he wants me to get away from Edgar Tonmore, and I would go away from so
many more people if he wished it."

The evening passed into night, and Edmund was walking alone under the
wall, dreaming of Rose.

All this foolish gambling, quarrelsome, small world of men and women
made such a foil to her image. Molly and her mother, the Delaport
Greens, and many others were grouped in his mind as he purled the smoke
disdainfully from his cigar. Something in Molly's walk by his side just
now had made him see again the old woman with her quick, alert movements
in the garden at Florence; after all they were cut from the same piece,
the old wicked woman and the slight, dark girl with the curious eyes.
Molly must not be trusted; she must be suspected all the more because of
her attractions in the moments of dangerous gentleness. And with a
certain simplicity Edmund looked again at the moon above him, all the
more glorious because secret and dark things were moving stealthily
under the trees in the lower world.

And Molly was kneeling on her low window-seat, looking out at the same
moon in a mood of joy that was transmuted half consciously into prayer
by the alchemy of pure love.

CHAPTER XV

A POOR MAN'S DEATH

Early in October, Molly and Miss Carew took up their abode in a flat
with quite large rooms and a pleasing view of Hyde Park.

August and September had been two of the healthiest and most normal
months that Molly had ever spent or was likely ever to spend again. The
weeks between the rupture with the Delaport Greens and the journey to
Switzerland had been trying, although it was undoubtedly much pleasanter
to be Mrs. Carteret's guest t