eath. It was her last chance to talk to her:

"Mother ... Mother ... Don't you hear me? It's Una calling. Can't you
answer me this one last time? Oh, mother, think, mother dear, I can't
ever hear your voice again if you don't speak to me now.... Don't you
remember how we went home to Panama, our last vacation? Don't you
remember how happy we were down at the lake? Little mother, you haven't
forgotten, have you? Even if you don't answer, you know I'm watching by
you, don't you? See, I'm kissing your hand. Oh, you did want me to
sleep near you again, this last night-- Oh, my God! oh, my God! the last
night I shall ever spend with her, the very last, last night."

All night long the thin voice came from the little white-clad figure so
insignificant in the dimness, now lying motionless on the comforter she
had spread beside the bed, and talking in a tone of ordinary
conversation that was uncanny in this room of invisible whisperers; now
leaping up to kiss the dead hand in a panic, lest it should already be
gone.

The funeral filled the house with intruders. The drive to the cemetery
was irritating. She wanted to leap out of the carriage. At first she
concentrated on the cushion beside her till she thought of nothing in
the world but the faded bottle-green upholstery, and a ridiculous drift
of dust in the tufting. But some one was talking to her. (It was awkward
Mr. Sessions, for shrewd Mrs. Sessions had the genius to keep still.) He
kept stammering the most absurd platitudes about how happy her mother
must be in a heaven regarding which he did not seem to have very recent
or definite knowledge. She was annoyed, not comforted. She wanted to
break away, to find her mother's presence again in that sacred place
where she had so recently lived and spoken.

Yet, when Una returned to the flat, something was gone. She tried to
concentrate on thought about immortality. She found that she had
absolutely no facts upon which to base her thought. The hundreds of
good, sound, orthodox sermons she had heard gave her nothing but vague
pictures of an eternal church supper somewhere in the clouds--nothing,
blankly and terribly nothing, that answered her bewildered wonder as to
what had become of the spirit which had been there and now was gone.

In the midst of her mingling of longing and doubt she realized that she
was hungry, and she rather regretted having refused Mrs. Sessions's
invitation to dinner. She moved slowly about the kitche