at his feet and away at
the lighted electric bulb. "I thought it might please your sister," he
said and turned away.

Sylvia was aghast to think that she had perhaps wounded him. He seemed
to fear that he had flaunted his fortune in her face. He looked
acutely uncomfortable. She found that, as she had thought, she could
say anything, anything to him, and say it easily. She went to him
quickly and laid her hand on his arm. "It's splendid," she said,
looking deeply and frankly into his eyes. "Judith will be too
rejoiced! It _is_ like magic. And nobody but you could have done it so
that the money seems the least part of the deed!"

He looked down at her, touched, moved, his eyes very tender, but sad
as though with a divination of the barrier his fortune eternally
raised between them.

The door opened suddenly and Mrs. Marshall-Smith came in quickly,
not looking at them at all. From the pale agitation of her face they
recoiled, startled and alarmed. She sat down abruptly as though her
knees had given way under her. Her gloved hands were perceptibly
trembling in her lap. She looked straight at Sylvia, and for an
instant did not speak. If she had rushed in screaming wildly, her
aspect to Sylvia's eyes would scarcely have been more eloquent of
portentous news to come. It was a fitting introduction to what she now
said to them in an unsteady voice: "I've just heard--a despatch
from Jamiaca--something terrible has happened. The news came to
the American Express office when I was there. It is awful. Molly
Sommerville driving her car alone--an appalling accident to the
steering-gear, they think. Molly found dead under the car."

CHAPTER XXXVI

THE ROAD IS NOT SO CLEAR

It shocked Sylvia that Molly's death should make so little difference.
After one sober evening with the stunning words fresh before their
eyes, the three friends quickly returned to their ordinary routine
of life. It was not that they did not care, she reflected--she _did_
care. She had cried and cried at the thought of that quivering, vital
spirit broken by the inert crushing mass of steel--she could not bring
herself to think of the soft body, mangled, bloody. Austin cared too:
she was sure of it; but when they had expressed their pity, what more
could they do? The cabled statement was so bald, they hardly could
believe it--they failed altogether to realize what it meant--they
had no details on which to base any commentary. She who had lived so
i