eme mercy of God that she had had the chance of making the sacrifice
before it was forced from her. And could she shrink from mere ordinary
poverty, from a life such as the vast majority of men and women are
living on this earth? She did not really shrink in her will. It was only
a mechanical movement of thought from one point to another. Was it much
punishment for what she had done to be very poor? Would it not be better
to be unclassed--to live among people who help each other much because
they have little to give? Would it not be the way to do what Father Mark
had said she should try to do--those good things she had done before?
She could nurse, she could watch, she was able to do with little sleep.
She would be very humble with the sick and suffering now. And it would
not surely be wrong to go and find such a life far away from where she
had sinned? She began to wonder if she need stay and live through all
the complications of the coming days. Must it be the right thing to stay
because it was the most unbearable? She thought not. There are times
when recklessness is the only safety. If she did not burn her ships now
she could not tell what temptations might come. But she would not let it
be among her motives that thus she would thereby escape unbearable pity
from Lady Rose and the far sterner magnanimity of Edmund Grosse. She
would act simply; she would ask Rose a favour; she would ask her to
provide for Miss Carew.

Half consciously again her hands went to her throat. She unclasped the
pearl necklace that Edmund had seen on Madame Danterre's withered neck
in the garden at Florence. She slipped off four large rings, and then
gathered up a few jewels that lay about. "One ought not to leave
valuables about," she thought, and she did not know that she added
"after a death."

If Miss Carew had been in the room she would probably not have
understood that anything special was going on. Molly moved quietly
about, collecting together on a little table by the cupboard, rings,
brooches, buckles, watches--anything of much value. She sought and found
the key of the little safe in the wardrobe and put away these objects
with the large jewel cases already inside it. She also put with them her
cheque book and her banker's book. A very small cheque book on a
different bank where the interest of the L2000 had not been drawn on for
six months, she put down on her writing table. Then she looked round the
room. Was there nothing there