Left alone, her future rose before Chris, as she sat upon her bed and saw the time to come glimmer out of the night in colours more ashy than the moonbeams on the cotton blind.  Yet, as she looked her face burned, and one flame, vivid enough, flickered through all the future; the light on her own cheeks.  Her position as it faced her from various points of view acted upon her physical being—­suffocated her and brought a scream to her lips.  There was nobody to hear it, nobody to see the girl tear her hair, rise from her couch, fall quivering, face downward, on the little strip of carpet beside her bed.  Who could know even a little of what this meant to her?  Women had often lost the men they loved, but never, never like this.  So she assured herself.  Past sorrows and fears dwindled to mere shadows now; for the awful future—­the crushing months to come, rose grim and horrible on the horizon of Time, laden with greater terrors than she could face and live.

Alone, Chris told herself she might have withstood the oncoming tribulation—­struggled through the storms of suffering and kept her broken heart company as other women had done before and must again; but she would not be alone.  A little hand was stretching out of the loneliness she yearned for; a little voice was crying out of the solitude she craved.  The shadows that might have sheltered her were full of hard eyes; the secret places would only echo a world’s cruel laughter now—­that world which had let her loved one die uncared for, that world so pitiless to such as she.  Her thoughts were alternately defiant and fearful; then, before the picture of her mother and Will, her emotions dwindled from the tragic and became of a sort that weeping could relieve.  Tears, now mercifully released from their fountains, softened her bruised soul for a time and moderated the physical strain of her agony.  She lay long, half-naked, sobbing her heart out.  Then came the mad desire to be back with Clement at any cost, and profound pity for him overwhelmed her mind to the exclusion of further sorrow for herself.  She forgot herself wholly in grief that he was gone.  She would never hear him speak or laugh again; never again kiss the trouble from his eyes; never feel the warm breath of him, the hand-grip of him.  He was dead; and she saw him lying straight and cold in a padded coffin, with his hands crossed and cerecloth stiffly tying up his jaws.  He would sink into the silence that dwelt under the roots of the green grass; while she must go on and fight the world, and in fighting it, bring down upon his grave bitter words and sharp censures from the lips of those who did not understand.