“Don’t talk now, darling. It will tire you. I’m not going away. We can talk afterwards. Shall I read to you … the morning verses?” Joanna pleaded. And she held up the familiar, worn copy of Daily Light with its stamped leather covers and a star on the back, which had lain by Juley’s bedside these forty years.

But Juley shook her head emphatically.

“No, no!” she said – “not now.” And having clearly uttered these words she babbled off again, vehement but incomprehensible.

Then she stopped speaking, and a look of extreme surprise crossed her face.

Joanna, beside herself with helplessness, tried to give her water in a tea-spoon, tried brandy and water. But the liquid only ran down outside the unconscious mouth …

And the next moment Juley’s face passed from surprise to profound preoccupation. She seemed to sink within herself, drew one long, terrible breath, and frowned intently. Joanna looked for the first time upon death.

VII

Linnet had not yet returned, and after the first panic and blankness, Joanna resumed her mechanical task of tidying her mother’s room. It was the last thing she had been clearly asked to do. And as she did it she became gradually aware of a deep contentment which she could neither understand nor question. Soon she would be involved in the explosion of mourning. There was Linnet, poor boy! Georgie would have to be told. The doctor would come, and with him an unending, impertinent train of arrangements and condolences. But now, for this little while, she felt close to her mother as never before. Without speech they seemed to share the secrets of life and death. Soon enough would grief with its clumsy trappings and its real pain smash the exquisite prism. Then all would be chaotic and desolate again. None must rob them of this moment of union. It was infinitely precious and perfect.

So Joanna made the toilette table neat, arranged the bottles together on the crazy mantelpiece, and tried to make the room seemly as her mother had liked it to be.

But each time she turned away, the bed drew her back. And she came again and again to gaze at her mother. She laid her hand upon the forehead, and her flesh recoiled from the waxen coldness of that contact. This then was death. We must all die and be like this. No wonder little Ollie had cried. No wonder! Joanna was filled for the moment with a horror of anger against the physical outrage of death. She searched the immovable face, questioned it fearfully. We must all die. None could escape. But here was one who had been used to speak of death as of hidden treasure, to be waited for with patience, but to be coveted exceedingly. Now she had her wish. What was it to her? In that last profound withdrawal by which she had met it, had she been afraid, or joyous, or simply unconscious?