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her almost irresistible cravings to relieve suffering. Ordinary human nature when not in pain was often too repugnant to Molly for her to be able to do good works in company with other people. She was, as she had told Edmund Grosse, a born anti-clerical, and she scorned philanthropists; so her best moods had to work themselves out alone and without direction. Nor was she likely to spoil the recipients of her attentions, partly from the strength of her character, partly because the poor know instinctively whether they are merely the objects on which to vent a restless longing to relieve pain, or whether they are loved for themselves. Molly, in the village at home, had always made the expression of gratitude impossible, but she constantly added ingratitude as a large item in the account she kept running, in her darker hours, against the human race. Late on a wet and windy October evening she went to undertake the nursing of Pat Moloney for the first part of the night. She had been visiting him constantly for several weeks, and actually nursing him for three days. "Has the doctor been?" "Yes, miss" (in a very loud whisper); "he says Pat is awful bad; he left a paper for you." Molly Dexter walked across the small, bare room and took a paper of directions from the chimney-piece, and then stood looking at the old man's heavy figure on the bed. He was lying on his side, his face turned to the wall. "You had better rest in the back room while I am here," she said. "I couldn't, indeed I couldn't, miss, him being like that; you mustn't ask me to. Besides, I've been round and asked the priest to come, and so I couldn't take my things off. I'll just have some tea and a drop of whisky in it, and I can keep going all the night, it's more than likely he'll die at the dawn." Molly eyed the woman with supreme contempt. "It isn't at all certain that he's going to die, he'll make a good fight yet if you will give him a chance." Mrs. Moloney looked deeply offended. It had been all very well to be guided by a lady at the beginning of the illness, but now it was very different. She felt half consciously that science had done its worst, and bigger questions than temperatures and drugs were at issue. "A priest now," said Molly, in a whisper of intense scorn, "would kill him at once." Mrs. Moloney did not condescend to reply. She had propped a poor little crucifix, a black cross, with a chipped white figure on it
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