The afternoon wore on; the soft golden light on the pavement was dappled with shadows; and the wind, blowing over the iron urns in the yard, scattered the withered leaves of portulaca over the grass.  Though the summer still lingered, and flowers were blooming behind the fences along the street, the faint violet haze of autumn was creeping slowly over the sunshine.  Now and then an acquaintance, returning from afternoon service, looked up to bow to her, and while the daylight was still strong, Marthy, resplendent in Sunday raiment, came out of the little green gate at the side of the yard and passed, mincing, in the direction of the negro church.  Then the door opened slowly, and the two old maids came in and stopped for a minute at the parlour door to see if Gabriella “had company.”

“Such a lovely evening, my dear”—­they never used the word afternoon—­“we went all the way to the cemetery.  She was buried in her grandfather’s lot, you know, in the old part up on the hill.  It was a beautiful drive, but Amelia and I couldn’t help thinking of the poor young thing all the time.”

It was Miss Jemima who had spoken, and her kind, plain face, all puffs and pleasant wrinkles, had not yet relaxed from the unnatural solemnity it had worn at the funeral.  She was seldom grave, and never despondent, though to Gabriella she appeared to lead an unendurable life.  Unlike Miss Amelia, she had not even a happy youth and a lover to look back upon; she had nothing, indeed, except her unfailing goodness and patience to support her.

“I don’t like to see you alone, honey,” she said, untying the strings of her black silk bonnet, which fitted her cheerful features like a frame.  “If the doctor hadn’t told me to go to bed as soon as I came in, we’d sit a while with you for company.”

She felt that it was morbid and unnatural in Gabriella to sit alone in a dim room when there were so many young people out in the streets.  “You mark my words, there’s some reason back of Gabriella’s moping all by herself,” she remarked to Miss Amelia as she took off her “things” a few minutes later.  “It wouldn’t surprise me a bit to hear that she’d had a fuss with her sweetheart.”

“I declare, sister Jemima, you are too sentimental to live,” observed Miss Amelia as she filled the tea kettle on the fender “Anybody would think to hear you talk that there was nothing in life except making love.”

“Well, there isn’t anything else so interesting when you’re young.  You used to think so yourself, sister Amelia.”

Standing gaunt and black, with the tea kettle held out stiffly before her, Miss Amelia turned her tragic face on her sister.

“Well, I reckon you don’t know much about it,” she responded with the unconscious cruelty of age.  Having been once the victim of a great passion, she had developed at last into an uncompromising realist, wholly devoid of sentimentality, while Miss Jemima, lacking experience, had enveloped the unknown in a rosy veil of illusion.