into her brain, that the ground was scorching up the soles of her feet. But it did not occur to her to open her umbrella.
The passing scarlet jacket of a soldier made her close her eyes with pain; the whistle of a boy behind her set all her nerves ajar.
Should she ever get home? . . . She dragged on with leaden feet and prayed persistently for darkness.
But when at last she lay upon her own bed in such darkness as closed shutters and drawn curtains can give, all she could say was, "Oh, the sun, the sun!" and lift her hand indeterminately towards her head. And when, a few hours before the end, she lost the power of speech, still her hand wandered up every now and again automatically towards her head.
Mrs. Le Messurier sits alone with her grandson in the living-room of Mon Désir. He cuts out pictures from the illustrated papers, and she gazes tirelessly through dim and tearless eyes into the past. Bright crowds of long-dead men and women pass before her, and among them the two Agneses are never absent long. Then, all at once, as the boy looks up to claim her attention, with his mirthless laugh, the vision is scattered into thin wreaths of smoke.
