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