capacity for seeing herself, or, like Ellen, for finding in the death of Fergus an illumination which served in a mysterious fashion to light up the long progression of her life. In her sorrow, Hattie no longer even pitied herself; and this, of course, may have been the secret of her dignity. Hattie, the martyr, who bore her cross and flung herself before her family like the Pope before the Visigoths, no longer existed. In her place there was a strong, almost grim woman, who was silent and did not complain.
Nor had she, like the more civilized, the pleasure of books and of philosophic reflection. Her life since the very beginning had been far too active for such things; and now, when at last there was time, when she had no one to care for save the independent old man, she could not read, she could not reflect. Books were poor pale things by comparison with the ferocious activity of life itself. There were no stockings to darn, no one for whom she might make meringues, no dog to place upon his mat before locking up the house. (To the apartment there was but one door and it locked of itself. It was, properly speaking, no real home at all.) So she came to invent things for herself to do. She lingered over her work and took (though she was rich now) to such pale tasks as embroidery and knitting, only to find that the objects of her labor, having been created for no real purpose, accumulated dismally in the drawers and cupboards.
She had letters both from Ellen and Robert which she kept in the family Bible to read over and over again; and sometimes a shameful, bitter thought crept into the recesses of her active mind. It was a terrible thought, which she thrust hastily aside as impious and touched with blasphemy; but it returned nevertheless again and again to torment her. She thought, "If only it had been Robert instead of Fergus!" (Robert who was so steadfast and reliable, who already was the youngest captain of his division). She was proud of him too, but in a different way. She could not say how. . . .
The awful thought would not die. She would have given Robert to keep Fergus, though in the solitude of the empty flat
