the way the young man had touched the wreck upon the bed.
She had known thrills of curious joy herself when relieving physical
agony; was it something like that which filled the whole personality and
bearing of the priest?

She began to feel that she could not go away; she wanted to see this
thing out. It was something entirely new to her.

Low voices murmured in the next room; she hesitated now to pass through,
she might be intruding at too sacred a moment. She believed that the
priest was hearing the dying man's confession. She had a half
contemptuous dislike of this feeling of mystery and privacy. She felt
she had been foolish not to go away at once. But she did not move for
nearly half an hour, and then the door opened, and the man's wife came
in and started back.

"I'm sure I thought you had gone, miss." Her manner was much more
cordial than it had been before. She was tearful and excited. "I want to
raise him a bit higher, and there's a cloak here. He is going off fast
now, but he was quite himself when I left him with the father to make
his confession; he looked his old self and the good man he was for many
a year--and God Almighty knows he has suffered enough these last years
to change him, poor soul."

Molly went back with her to the sick bed and helped her to raise the
dying man. The dawn came in feebly now, and made the guttering candle
dimmer. Death was all that was written on the grey face, and the body
laboured for breath. The flicker of light in the mind, that had been
roused, perhaps, by those rites which had passed in her absence, had
faded; there was not the faintest sign of intelligence in the eyes now;
the hands were cold and would never be warm again. The sandy cat had
crept away into the other room; and outside the great town was alive
again, the vast crowds were astir, each of whom was just one day nearer
to death. There was nothing but horror, stale, common horror, in it all
for Molly. But, kneeling as upright as a marble figure, and his whole
face full of a joy that seemed quite human, quite natural, Father
Molyneux was reading prayers, and there was a curious note of triumph in
the clear tones. At first she did not heed the words; then they thrust
themselves upon her, and her eyes fastened on the dying, meaningless
face, the very prey of death, in a kind of stupefaction at the words
spoken to him.

"I commend thee to Almighty God, dearest brother, and commend thee to
Him whose creature th