“It’s over?” said Constance.

And he very slightly moved his head.  “Come downstairs, please,” he enjoined her, in a pause that ensued.  Constance was amazingly courageous.  The doctor was very solemn and very kind; Constance had never before seen him to such heroic advantage.  He led her with infinite gentleness out of the room.  There was nothing to stay for; Sophia had gone.  Constance wanted to stay by Sophia’s body; but it was the rule that the stricken should be led away, the doctor observed this classic rule, and Constance felt that he was right and that she must obey.  Lily Holl followed.  The servant, learning the truth by the intuition accorded to primitive natures, burst into loud sobs, yelling that Sophia had been the most excellent mistress that servant ever had.  The doctor angrily told her not to stand blubbering there, but to go into her kitchen and shut the door if she couldn’t control herself.  All his accumulated nervous agitation was discharged on Maud like a thunderclap.  Constance continued to behave wonderfully.  She was the admiration of the doctor and Lily Holl.  Then Dick Povey came back.  It was settled that Lily should pass the night with Constance.  At last the doctor and Dick departed together, the doctor undertaking the mortuary arrangements.  Maud was hunted to bed.

Early in the morning Constance rose up from her own bed.  It was five o’clock, and there had been daylight for two hours already.  She moved noiselessly and peeped over the foot of the bed at the sofa.  Lily was quietly asleep there, breathing with the softness of a child.  Lily would have deemed that she was a very mature woman, who had seen life and much of it.  Yet to Constance her face and attitude had the exquisite quality of a child’s.  She was not precisely a pretty girl, but her features, the candid expression of her disposition, produced an impression that was akin to that of beauty.  Her abandonment was complete.  She had gone through the night unscathed, and was now renewing herself in calm, oblivious sleep.  Her ingenuous girlishness was apparent then.  It seemed as if all her wise and sweet behaviour of the evening could have been nothing but so many imitative gestures.  It seemed impossible that a being so young and fresh could have really experienced the mood of which her gestures had been the expression.  Her strong virginal simplicity made Constance vaguely sad for her.

Creeping out of the room, Constance climbed to the second floor in her dressing-gown, and entered the other chamber.  She was obliged to look again upon Sophia’s body.  Incredible swiftness of calamity!  Who could have foreseen it?  Constance was less desolated than numbed.  She was as yet only touching the fringe of her bereavement.  She had not begun to think of herself.  She was drenched, as she gazed at Sophia’s body, not by pity for herself, but by compassion for the immense disaster of her sister’s life.  She perceived fully now for the first time the greatness of that