And she was more than a romantic; she was a poet.  What was there in all Keats and Shelley but just this same passion for unpossessable things?  It was vulgar, like despising a man because he has not made money though it is well known that he has worked hard, to do her less honour than them because she was not able to set down in verse the things she undoubtedly felt.  And she was good, so good—­even divinely good.  Life had given her so little beyond her meagre flesh and breakable bones that it might have seemed impossible that she should satisfy the exorbitant demands of her existence.  But she had done that; she had reared a child, and of the wet wood of poverty she had made a bright fire on her hearthstone.  She had done more than that:  she had given her child a love that was unstinted good living for the soul.  And she had done more than that:  to every human being with whom she came in contact she had made a little present of something over and above the ordinary decent feelings arising from the situation, something which was too sensible and often too roguish to be called tenderness, which was rather the handsomest possible agreement with the other person’s idea of himself, and a taking of his side in his struggle with fate.  This power of giving gifts was a miracle of the loaves and fishes kind.  “Mother, I did not desairve you!” she cried.  “I do wish I had been better to you!” And what had her mother got for being a romantic, a poet, and a saint who worked miracles?  Nothing.  This snoring death in a hospital was life’s final award to her.  It could not possibly be so.  She sat bolt upright, her mouth a round hole with horror, restating the problem.  But it was so.  A virtuous woman was being allowed to die without having been happy.

“Oh, mother, mother!” Ellen wailed, wishing they had not embarked on the universe in such a leaky raft as this world, and was terrified to find that her mother’s hand made no answer to her pressure.  “Nurse!” she cried, and was enraged that no answer came from behind the screen, until the door opened, and the nurse, looking pretentiously sensible, followed the two doctors to the bed.  She found it detestable that this cold hireling should have detected her mother’s plight before she did, and when they took her away for a moment she stumbled round the screen, whimpering, “Richard!” trying to behave well, but wanting to make just enough fuss for him to realise how awful she was feeling.

Richard was sitting in front of the fire, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes, but he jumped up alertly and gathered her to his arms.

“Richard, she’s going!”

He could find no consolation to give her but a close, unvoluptuous embrace.  They stood silent, looking at the fire.  “Is it not strange,” she whispered, “that people really die?”

Richard did not in the least participate in this feeling.  He merely looked at her with misted eyes, as if he found it touching that anyone should feel like that, and this reassured her.  Perhaps he knew an answer to this problem.  It might be possible that he knew it and yet could not tell it, for she had never been able to tell him how she loved him, though she knew quite well.  She lifted her face to his that she might see if there were knowledge in his eyes, and was disappointed that he merely bent to kiss her.