CHAPTER LVI
I was writing to Owen when my father brought me Katherine's letter. It was to say good-bye to me, and there was a veiled reproach at my not having come to the station to see them off. She had looked out for me up to the last moment; so that in the end it was really I who had failed! I smiled dimly.
As I write it now, in this quiet, gray, autumn morning, it appears to me that the thought then hovering at the back of my mind was, after all, not so very foolish. Death, coming without disease, without weakness, before life has grown stale, before illusions have been shattered and innocence marred;—simply upon the bright, fresh comedy of life, the dropping of a dark, rapid curtain.
I finished my letter to Owen, and addressed it; but when that was done I still sat on at the table, holding my pen, on which the ink had long since dried. Then I bent down and leaned my forehead upon Katherine's open letter. When I looked up the sun was shining in the garden, and shining in on me through the window; nothing had changed. . . . .
In the afternoon I went up to Derryaghy, where Mrs. Carroll received me. I spoke quite quietly to her, just as usual; but all I remember now is that there were some red dahlias in a bowl on the table, and that Mrs. Carroll proposed taking me to Paris for my Christmas holidays.
It was when I had left her and had gone out to walk in the woods, that I suddenly felt the full reality of what had
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