"No, I came, hoping you would give me the paper, as you have done, without knowing this." Evidently this news impressed Molly deeply, but she did not want to discuss it. Presently she said: "I am glad you came in time before I was frightened. How you have wanted to make me save my soul! You have helped me very much, but I cannot save my soul." "But God can," said Mark. "You see," she went on, "I never know what I am going to do--going to be--next. Imagine my being a thief! It seems now almost incredible. And I don't know what may come next." For a second she looked at him with wild terror in her eyes. "Think how many years I have before me. How can I hope that I----?" "You will do great, great good," said Mark, with emotion. She shook her head. "David committed a worse sin than yours." Molly smiled, a little, incredulous, grey smile, for a moment. "I may be good to-day. I may be full of peace and joy even to-night--but to-morrow? You told me once that I should only know true joy if I had been humbled in the dust. I am low enough now, but the comfort has not come yet, and, even if God comforts me, it won't last. I shall still be I, and life is so long." "You must trust Him--you must indeed. He will find a solution. You are exhausted now with the victory you have gained. Rest now, and then do the good things you have done before. Trust in the higher side of your character; God gave it to you. Believe me, He has called you to great things." As he spoke she covered her face with her hands, and a deep blush of shame rose from her neck to her forehead, visible through the thin, white fingers. "I suppose He will find a way out. As I can't understand how you have cared so much to save my soul, I suppose I can understand His love still less. Must you go? You will pray for me, I know." She held out her hand with a look of generous appeal to his forgiveness. "God bless you!" he said, with complete sympathy, and then he went away to seek an interview with Sir Edmund Grosse. Molly sank down on a low seat by the window. Then she went slowly upstairs, dragging her feet a little from fatigue, and took out of the tin box the packet of very old letters. She burned them one by one, with a match for each, kneeling in front of the empty fireplace in her bed-room. They told the story of her mother's attempt to persuade Sir David of their marriage during his illness in India. It was not a pretty story--one of deceit and intrigue. It should disappear now. Then she sat down in a deep chair in the window. She stayed very still, curled up against the cushion behind her, her eyes fixed on the ground. She was hardly conscious of thought; she was trying to recall things Mark had said, murmuring them over to herself. She was trying not to sink into the depths of humiliation and despair. It was a blind clinging to a vague hope for better things, with a certain torpor of all her faculties.