et and essay as it appeared; they
flattered her with technical talk; they were full of the importance of
women to the new doctrine and the new era.

The handsome brother was certainly in love with her; the other,
probably. Marcella was not in love with either of them, but she was
deeply interested in all three, and for the sickly brother she felt at
that time a profound admiration--nay, reverence--which influenced her
vitally at a critical moment of life. "Blessed are the poor"--"Woe unto
you, rich men"--these were the only articles of his scanty creed, but
they were held with a fervour, and acted upon with a conviction, which
our modern religion seldom commands. His influence made Marcella a
rent-collector under a lady friend of his in the East End; because of
it, she worked herself beyond her strength in a joint attempt made by
some members of the Venturist Society to organise a Tailoresses' Union;
and, to please him, she read articles and blue-books on Sweating and
Overcrowding. It was all very moving and very dramatic; so, too, was the
persuasion Marcella divined in her friends, that she was destined in
time, with work and experience, to great things and high place in the
movement.

The wholly unexpected news of Mr. Boyce's accession to Mellor had very
various effects upon this little band of comrades. It revived in
Marcella ambitions, instincts and tastes wholly different from those of
her companions, but natural to her by temperament and inheritance. The
elder brother, Anthony Craven, always melancholy and suspicious, divined
her immediately.

"How glad you are to be done with Bohemia!" he said to her ironically
one day, when he had just discovered her with the photographs of Mellor
about her. "And how rapidly it works!"

"What works?" she asked him angrily.

"The poison of possession. And what a mean end it puts to things! A week
ago you were all given to causes not your own; now, how long will it
take you to think of us as 'poor fanatics!'--and to be ashamed you ever
knew us?"

"You mean to say that I am a mean hypocrite!" she cried. "Do you think
that because I delight in--in pretty things and old associations, I must
give up all my convictions? Shall I find no poor at Mellor--no work to
do? It is unkind--unfair. It is the way all reform breaks down--through
mutual distrust!"

He looked at her with a cold smile in his dark, sunken eyes, and she
turned from him indignantly.

When they bade her good-by