ept his defence of himself. That he was
still lovable, and that he had no dark thoughts of her, had been such
joy, but only a passing joy. Had he not told her in horribly plain
speech that he loved Lady Rose, and would love her to the end? All this,
which was so vital to Molly, was but an episode in a friendship that was
a detail in his life!

But now, alone, trying to see clearly through the confusion, how
unbearable it had been to hear him say, "That you with your youth and
your innocence and your candour...." He had thought it too horrible to
suspect her, and by that confidence he made her load of guilt almost
unendurable.

She could not go on like this, could not live like this. The silence was
far more unbearable now that a human voice had broken into it, a voice
she loved repudiating with indignant scorn the possibility of suspecting
her! She must go somewhere, she must speak to some one. But at this
moment it was also evident that she must dress for dinner.

CHAPTER XXIX

THE RELIEF OF SPEECH

There is quite commonly a peculiar glow of sunshine just before a storm,
a brightness so obviously unreliable that we are torn between enjoyment
and anxiety. I have known no greater revelation of Nature's glories,
even in a sunset hour, than in one of these moments of glow before the
darkness of storm. And in a man's life there is sometimes an episode so
bright, so full of promise, that we feel its perfection to be the
measure of its instability.

Such a moment had come to Mark Molyneux. The time of depression and
trial, the time when a vague sense of danger and a vague sense of
aspiration had made him turn his eyes towards the cloister, had ended in
his taking his work more and more earnestly and becoming surprisingly
successful in his dealings with both rich and poor.

It seemed during the past winter that Mark would carry all before him;
he had come into close contact with the poor, and in the circle in which
his personal influence could be felt there was a real movement of
religious earnestness and moral reform. There was a noticeable glow of
zeal in the other curates and in the parish workers, who, with one or
two exceptions, were enthusiastic in their devotion to him personally
and to his notions of work. Even after Easter several of the
recently-cured drunkards were persevering, and other notoriously bad
characters seemed determined to show that the first shoots of their
awakened moral life were not