She sat up with a great sweeping gesture of her arms, as though she must fight for air.  The little room seemed palpably crammed with those jostling, shouting, battling thoughts.  She slid from the bed and went to the window, leaning far out from it, and looking up at the sky, immeasurably high and black, studded thick with stars.

They looked down disdainfully at her fever and misery.  A chilling consolation fell from them upon her, like a cold dew.  She felt herself shrink to imperceptible proportions.  What did they matter, the struggles of the maggots who crawled about the folds of the globe, itself the most trifling and insignificant of all the countless worlds which people the aimless disorder of the universe?  What difference did it make?  Anything they did was so soon indistinguishable from anything else.  The easiest way . . . to yield to whatever had the strongest present force . . . that was as good as any other way in the great and blind confusion of it all.

After she had gone back to bed, she could still see the silent multitude of stars above her, enormous, remote beyond imagination, and it was under their thin, cold, indifferent gaze that she finally fell asleep.

CHAPTER XXII

EUGENIA DOES WHAT SHE CAN

July 22.

Agnes brought upstairs an armful of white roses.  “The lady that visits at your house, she brought them from your garden and she wants to see you if she can.”

Eugenia of course.  That was unexpected.  She must have made an effort to do that, she who hated sickness and death and all dark things.

“Yes, tell her I will be down in a moment.  Take her in a glass of cold water, too, will you please, Agnes.  The walk over here must have been terribly hot for her.”

The roses showed that.  They were warm to the touch and as she looked at them intently, at their white clear faces, familiar to her as those of human beings, bent on her with a mute message from the garden, she saw they had begun to droop imperceptibly, that the close, fine texture of their petals had begun ever so slightly to wither.  She sprinkled them, put their stems deep into water and went downstairs, wiping her moist hands on her handkerchief.

Eugenia in mauve organdie stood up from the deep Windsor chair where she had sunk down, and came forward silently to greet her.  They kissed each other ceremoniously in token of the fact that a death lay between them and the last time they had met . . . was it only yesterday morning?

“Were you able to sleep at all, Marise?  You look shockingly tired.”

“Oh yes, thanks.  I slept well enough.  Are the children all right?”

Eugenia nodded, “Yes, as usual.”

“Did their father tell them the news of Cousin Hetty’s death?  How did they take it?  Elly perhaps was . . .”

Eugenia did not know about this, had not happened to hear anybody say.  But old Toucle was back, at least, to do the work.