Molly was not looking at Undine. Her glance had fallen on a drawing near it. It was another drawing of a girl; a very beautiful girl, playing a violin. It was called “Life.” No one would have asked why about this; the lightly poised figure, the glowing eyes under their shadowing black brows, the fiddle tucked away under the round chin, and the dimples tucked away in the round cheeks, the fine supple hands, expressed the very spirit of life, all its joy and brilliance and genius and fire, and all its potential tragedy. Molly looked at it without comment, as she might have looked at a picture of some friend of the artist’s who had died a sad death. She knew that Eileen Le Moine had died, from her point of view; she knew that she had spent the last months of Hugh Datcherd’s life with him, for Eddy had told her. She had said to Eddy that this was dreadful and wicked. Eddy had said, “They don’t think it is, you see.” Molly had said that what they thought made no difference to right and wrong; Eddy had replied that it made all the difference in the world. She had finally turned on him with, “But _you_ think it dreadful, Eddy?” and he had, to her dismay, shaken his head. “Not as they’re doing it, I don’t. It’s all right. You’d know it was all right if you knew them, Molly. It’s been, all along, the most faithful, loyal, fine, simple, sad thing in the world, their love. They’ve held out against it just so long as to give in would have hurt anyone but themselves; now it won’t, and she’s giving herself to him that he may die in peace. Don’t judge them, Molly.” But she had judged them so uncompromisingly, so unyieldingly, that she had never referred to the subject again, for fear it should come between Eddy and her. A difference of principle was the one thing Molly could not bear. To her this thing, whatever its excuse, was wrong, against the laws of the Christian Church, in fine, wicked. And it was Eddy’s friends who had done it, and he didn’t want her to judge them; she must say nothing, therefore. Molly’s ways were ways of peace. Mrs. Crawford peered through her lorgnette at the drawing. “What’s that delicious thing? ‘Life.’ Quite; just that. That is really utterly charming. Who’s the original? Why, it’s-----” She stopped suddenly. “It’s Mrs. Le Moine, the violinist,” said Jane. “She’s a great friend of ours,” Sally interpolated, in childish pride, from behind. “I expect you’ve heard her play, haven’t you?” Mrs. Crawford had. She recognised the genius of the picture, which had so exquisitely caught and imprisoned the genius of the subject. “Of course; who hasn’t? A marvellous player. And a marvellous picture.” “It’s Eileen all over,” said Eddy, who knew it of old. “Hugh bought it, you know,” said Jane. “And when he died Eileen sent it back to me. I thought perhaps you and Eddy,” she turned to Molly, “might care to have it for a wedding-present, with ‘Undine.’ ”