forting it might be. Her bosom rose, torn now and then with deep,
slow sobs, like the ground swell of a sea moved by some vast, remote,
invisible cause. She had been sobbing thus for some twenty-four hours.

She had not moved about very much today in her household, had not often
left her chair here at the table. The mob had destroyed most of her
pitiful store of gear, so there was small choice left her.

Somewhere she had found, deep down in a trunk tray, an old and faded
garment, its silken sleeves so worn that the creases were now open--a
blouse which she had put away long, long ago--twenty years and more ago.
She wore it as best she might; and over the neck where the silk was gone
she had cast a white shawl, also of silk, a thing likewise come down,
treasured, from her meager girlhood days. This would serve her, so she
thought, until she could find heart to go to bed and endeavor to find
sleep.... Yes. They may have been of her own mother's wedding finery.
Yes. Perhaps she one day had planned they might be parts of her own
wedding gear.... But she had had no wedding.

She had done her hair, with Miss Julia's weeping aid, as simply as might
be--as she had when she was younger. It lay now in long, heavy, deep
rolls, down the nape of her white neck, along the sides of her head,
covering her little ears, still shapely. Her face was white as death,
but still it held traces in its features, sharpened and refined, of what
once was a tender and joyous beauty of its own--a beauty now high and
spiritual. In her time Aurora Lane had been known far and wide as a very
beautiful girl; self-willed, yes; wild--but beautiful. She did not
remember these things now, not in the least; and there was no mirror
left unbroken in the place.

The evening waxed on, approaching nine of the clock, at which time good
folk began to turn up the porch chairs against the wall so that the
rain might not hurt them if it came, and to draw back into the stuffy
rooms and to prepare for the use of the stuffy beds. Fathers of families
now drank deeply at the pitcher of ice water left on the center table.
One little group after another, visible here and there on the porches or
the stairs along the little street, lessened and gradually disappeared.
One by one the lights went out all over the town. By ten o'clock the
town would have settled down to slumber. It was Monday, and on Monday
night not even the most ardent swains frequent hammocks or front parlors