suffering.

Ordinary human nature when not in pain was often too repugnant to Molly
for her to be able to do good works in company with other people. She
was, as she had told Edmund Grosse, a born anti-clerical, and she
scorned philanthropists; so her best moods had to work themselves out
alone and without direction. Nor was she likely to spoil the recipients
of her attentions, partly from the strength of her character, partly
because the poor know instinctively whether they are merely the objects
on which to vent a restless longing to relieve pain, or whether they are
loved for themselves.

Molly, in the village at home, had always made the expression of
gratitude impossible, but she constantly added ingratitude as a large
item in the account she kept running, in her darker hours, against the
human race.

Late on a wet and windy October evening she went to undertake the
nursing of Pat Moloney for the first part of the night. She had been
visiting him constantly for several weeks, and actually nursing him for
three days.

"Has the doctor been?"

"Yes, miss" (in a very loud whisper); "he says Pat is awful bad; he left
a paper for you."

Molly Dexter walked across the small, bare room and took a paper of
directions from the chimney-piece, and then stood looking at the old
man's heavy figure on the bed. He was lying on his side, his face turned