revolt and bitterness in which her thoughts on human life would move
when she had no labour for her hands. He was another of those who
suffered so uselessly, a mere half animal who had to do the rough work
of the world, and then was dropped into the great charnel house of
unmeaning death. As soon as the man began to show signs, faint signs of
perception, she left the priest by his bedside and went back into the
inner room to put on the cloak she had left there. And then she
hesitated.

What would go on in the next room? She was anxious now to know more
about it, because she had caught so strange a look on Father Molyneux's
face. If he had only known this man before she could have understood it.
But how could there be this passion of affection, this intensity of
feeling, for a total stranger, a rough brutal-looking fellow who was no
longer in pain, who would probably die easily enough, and probably be no
great loss to those he left? She had seen a strange intensity of
reverence in the way the young man had touched the wreck upon the bed.
She had known thrills of curious joy herself when relieving physical
agony; was it something like that which filled the whole personality and
bearing of the priest?

She began to feel that she could not go away; she wanted to see this
thing out. It was something entirely new to her.

Low voices murmured in the next room; she hesitated now to pass through,
she might be intruding at too sacred a moment. She believed that the
priest was hearing the dying man's confession. She had a half
contemptuous dislike of this feeling of mystery and privacy. She felt
she had been foolish not to go away at once. But she did not move for
nearly half an hour, and then the door opened, and the man's wife came