Marise nodded silently.  Poor Elly!  She wished she could think of something comforting to say.  But what is there to say?  For her there had never been anything but stoic silence.  The mother hen clucked unconcernedly at their feet, and with coaxing guttural sounds called the rest of the chickens to eat a grain.  The strong ammonia smell of the chicken-yard rose in the sunshine.  Elly stood perfectly still, the little ball of yellow down in her hand, her face pale.

Marise looked down on her with infinite sympathy.  Her child, flesh of her flesh, meeting in this uncouth place the revelation of the black gulf!  But she remained silent, not knowing what to say.

Elly spoke in a low voice, “But, Mother, how can he be dead, just so quick while we were looking at him?  Mother, he was alive a minute ago.  He was breathing.  He looked at me.  He knew me.  And in just a minute like that . . . nothing!”

She looked around her wildly. “Mother, where has his life gone to?”

Marise put her arm around the little girl’s shoulders tenderly, but she still only shook her head without a word.  She did not know any more than Elly where his life had gone.  And surely loving silence was better than tinkling words of falseness.

Elly looked up at her, glistening drops of sweat standing on her temples.  “Mother,” she asked, urgently, in a loud, frightened whisper, “Mother, do we die like that?  Mother, will you die like that?  All in a moment . . . and then . . . nothing?”

It came like thunder, then, what Marise had never thought to feel.  With a clap, she found that this time she had something to answer, something to say to Elly.  Looking deep, deep into Elly’s eyes, she said firmly with a certainty as profound as it was new to her, “No, Elly, I don’t believe we do die like that . . . all in a moment . . . nothing.”

She was astonished by what she said, astonished by the sudden overflowing of something she had not known was there, but which was so great that her heart could not contain it, “comme une onde qui bout dans une urne trop pleine.”  And she was as moved as she was astonished.  Elly came into her arms with a comforted gasp.  They clung to each other closely, Marise’s ears humming with the unfamiliar beauty and intricacy of that new page at which she had had that instant’s glimpse.  Here was a new harmony, a new progression, a new rhythm to which her ear had just opened . . . heard here in this uncouth place!

* * * * *

That evening, after the children were in bed, she stopped her reading of the new music for a moment to say to Neale, “You know those ideas that other people are better for children than their parents are?”

“Yes,” said Neale, laying down the baseball page of his newspaper, instantly all there, looking at her intently.

“Well, I don’t believe a word of it,” said Marise.