Though the frown remained a stern furrow between the brows, the puzzled look was gone; and now the face seemed full of judgment. Joanna had heard that the faces of the dead were peaceful. This face was set in a perfect stillness of indignation and judgment. Juley, the merciful, the striver, the stricken, had become the judge. And to her child she would not say one word. She lay there in grave, remote, inexorable understanding, in unrelenting judgment that would never be disclosed.

As Joanna was trying unavailingly to straighten the bright quilt over the already stiffening body, a printed card slipped from a fold of the patchwork into her hand. It was lettered in blue, with red capitals and gold underlining, and she knew it must have fallen earlier out of Daily Light, within the flaps of which it had been Juley’s custom to cherish such things.

“These children are dear to Me,” it ran. “Be a mother to them and more than a mother. Watch over them tenderly. Be just and kind. If thy heart is not large enough to embrace them, I will enlarge it after a pattern of My Own. If these young children are docile and obedient, bless Me for it: if they are froward, call upon Me for help: if they weary thee, I will be thy Consolation: if thou sink under thy burden, I will be thy Reward.”

The daughter, having read, leaned down, whispered something in her dead mother’s ear, and ran out of the cottage blind with tears.

This was death. Not the cold forehead, the stillness, the sad, uncouth posture. But this – that the child could never again say – “I love you,” and see her mother’s eyes light up with joy! How unimaginable it was, and how pitiful, that she should now have to ask herself whether once in all these years of womanhood she had clearly and simply declared her love! Now it seemed to her that all these years her mother had been supplicating for that alone. And now it was too late.

In the afternoon Joanna and an old woman from the village washed Juley’s body and dressed it for burial.

The brother and sister took turns in sitting by the dead till morning. Sometimes they remained a while together, talking in low tones. Once or twice they laughed a little. They felt like plotters.

At dawn Joanna was there alone, and suddenly she could endure the room no longer. What foolishness to stay here when her mother had escaped – had gone like a bird over a lake – had fled and left behind all the tedious, daily matters she had so hated, the staleness, the fearfulness, the makeshifts, the heavy, dragging carcase of flesh!