A Sketch of the Past, Part 3 Summary and Analysis

Virginia continues her recollections of life following her mother's death; how everybody in the family wore deepest black; how Stella struggled to console Leslie, and how everyone felt as though all the joy, all the light, all the laughter had gone out of the house. She recalls two moments of transcendent light and life that managed to pierce the gloom, one being the brightness and color of the windows at Paddington Station, and the other forming as an more intellectual transcendence—a moment of reading a poem to Vanessa and having a sudden, intuitive understanding of the poem's true meaning. Julia's death made Julia unreal, her children solemn, Stella something of a martyr. Somehow, Stella managed to bring a little light back into the family's life.

Virginia details Stella's physicality...