made such a foil to her image. Molly and her mother, the Delaport
Greens, and many others were grouped in his mind as he purled the smoke
disdainfully from his cigar. Something in Molly's walk by his side just
now had made him see again the old woman with her quick, alert movements
in the garden at Florence; after all they were cut from the same piece,
the old wicked woman and the slight, dark girl with the curious eyes.
Molly must not be trusted; she must be suspected all the more because of
her attractions in the moments of dangerous gentleness. And with a
certain simplicity Edmund looked again at the moon above him, all the
more glorious because secret and dark things were moving stealthily
under the trees in the lower world.

And Molly was kneeling on her low window-seat, looking out at the same
moon in a mood of joy that was transmuted half consciously into prayer
by the alchemy of pure love.




CHAPTER XV

A POOR MAN'S DEATH


Early in October, Molly and Miss Carew took up their abode in a flat
with quite large rooms and a pleasing view of Hyde Park.

August and September had been two of the healthiest and most normal
months that Molly had ever spent or was likely ever to spend again. The
weeks between the rupture with the Delaport Greens and the journey to