What was before me—the sharp lines of books and chair backs and the deep rich colors of cushion and sofa—mingled with the scenes that thronged in memory and on the page. The diary had granted me fresh eyes. The diary made me the hinge upon the gate between the present and the living past: I could swing open—or shut—at will.

And must I open it? I asked Susannah’s scrapbooks, and crossed my arms. Must I indeed?

A serving girl passed by, carrying the first of the tea trays upstairs, and smiled pleasantly at me. With a start, I was recalled to the day. Mama! I had forgotten Mama. Another of the girls passed me on her way upstairs and I darted after her, thinking to catch her up and take the tray she carried to Mama myself.

Morning glowed softly into the room, the curtains still pulled across the windows. One of the shades lifted and lowered in a small breeze. I put down the tea tray and threw wide the curtains to let the light in. Then I turned round. Mama lay stretched upon the bed, still fast asleep, her head turned to the side, her long, pale neck gleaming out of her lacy collar. Her hands lay open on either side, perfectly still and cupped, the slender fingers slightly bent.

I crossed back through the door, eased myself out of my dress and slippers, and sought my own pillow for sleep.

Mama did not wake me before descending to her breakfast, and when I arrived below, flushed and hungry, her pale face greeted me like a cold and distant moon from the middle of the deserted breakfast room.

“How does Miss Grange?” she asked.

“She has died,” I replied with a small tremor of voice.

“Ah,” said Mama, and sipped again at her tea, her eyes set upon the middle distance of the room behind me.

“Two years ago, I should have welcomed the news,” she mused aloud.

“Mama!”

She looked up and saw the tears in my eyes. “Why, Maisie, I am sorry.”

“But now?” I asked crossly.

“Now?”

“Now you do not welcome the news?”

She shook her head sadly. “Now it seems that yet another part of him has also died.”

“Another part of whom?” I asked, shaken.

“Why, of Papa, of course.” She replaced the butter knife upon the dish.

“Mama?”

The toast stopped halfway to her lips, and she regarded me an instant. “Do not mistake me for an utter fool,” she said quite low, and then returned to the toast upon her plate.

I sat silent in the glare of this new light. She gave me an odd pinched look as she swept the crumbs from off the cloth into her cupped hand and then rose to throw them in the dying fire. “Ah, and here is Mr. Cutting!”