as cunning
as he. He had done what he had, badly of course he could not do
otherwise--a foredained failure such as he--bungled it hopelessly; but
the idea was the same--a bad travesty of a bad idea, badly worked out.
For a moment her mind glanced aside from the main issue in disgust
and contempt for the method. It was sin without genius, a puerile
theft without adequate return, a miserable fall, and for such a
purpose! To expect to find the streaked daffodil unguarded in an
outhouse! To sell it for five pounds and think to spend the money on
creature comforts! It is hard to say which of the three was the worst.
The really good have little idea how such fool's knavery looks to the
shadily clever; it brings home to them the wrongness of wrong,
disgusting them with it and with themselves, as no preaching in the
world can.

The moon had risen by this time; its first beams shone in at the
unshuttered window. Julia went to the door and, opening it, looked
out. There was a little mist about and the moon, quite a young one,
was struggling through it, shining with a soft, diffused light that
made the landscape very unearthly.

It was wonderfully still out of doors, quiet and damp with belts of
unexplained shadow here and there, and a sense of illimitable space
and silence. Julia sat down on the door steps and smelt the good smell
of the earth and felt the nearness of it. But it did not comfort her;
she was not in tune with the night; she had neither part nor lot with
these things. "Thief, and daughter of a thief;" the words kept coming
to her--and he, the man whom she never named to herself, had called
her his good comrade! She bowed her face to her knees and sat
motionless.

She had told him the truth about herself; she had not been ashamed;
she would not have been even if she had taken the daffodil. But her
father! She was ashamed for him with a bitter shame; ashamed of
herself and him too, in thought and intention at least they were one,
double-dealers. "Two grubby little people," as she had seen them long
ago when they first stood in company with that man.

"But you don't know; you have not our temptations." She almost spoke
aloud, unconsciously addressing the dewy silence as her mind called
the man plainly before her. "You have never wanted money as I wanted
it, or wanted things as father wanted them. Oh, you would despise the
things he wanted--so do I; they are miserable and mean and sordid; you
couldn't want whisky