in a silence
which is neither endurance nor patience.

Maud was taken from me first; she went without a word or a sign. She
was better that day, she declared, than she had felt for some time; she
was on the upward grade. She walked a few hundred yards with Maggie and
myself, and then she went back; the last sight I had of her alive was
when she stood at the corner and waved her hand to us as we went out of
sight. I am glad I looked round and saw her smile. I had not the
smallest or faintest premonition of what was coming; indeed, I was
lighter of mood than I had been for some time. We came in; we were told
that she was tired and had gone up to lie down. As she did not come
down to tea, I went up and found her lying on her bed, her head upon
her hand--dead. The absolute peace and stillness of her attitude showed
us that she had herself felt no access of pain. She had lain down to
rest, and she had rested indeed. Even at my worst and loneliest, I have
been able to be glad that it was even so. If I could know that I should
die thus in joy and tranquillity, it would be a great load off my mind.

But the grief, the shock to Maggie was too much for my dear,
love-nurtured child. A sort of awful and desperate strength came on me
after that; I felt somehow, day by day, that I must just put away my
own grief till a quiet hour, in order that I might sustain and guard
the child; but her heart was broken, I think, though they say that no
one dies of sorrow. She lay long ill--so utterly frail, so appealing in
her grief, that I could think of nothing but saving her. Was it a kind
of selfishness that needed to be broken down in me? Perhaps it was!
Every single tendril of my heart seemed to grow round the child and
clasp her close; she was all that I had left, and in some strange way
she seemed to be all that I had lost too. And then she faded out of
life, not knowing that she was fading, but simply too tired to live;
and my desire alone seemed to keep her with me. Till at last, seeing
her weariness and weakness, I let my desire go; I yielded, I gave her
to God, and He took her, as though He had waited for my consent.

And now that I am alone, I will say, with such honesty as I can muster,
that I have no touch of self-pity, no rebellion. It is all too deep and
dark for that. I am not strong enough even to wish to die; I have no
wishes, no desires at all. The three seem for ever about me, in my
thoughts and in my dreams. When Alec died