over my mother, pointing me out to her, and telling her to wave her
hand and smile, because I liked it so. That action was an epitome
of my sister's life.

I had been gone a fortnight when the telegram was put into my
hands. I had got a letter from my sister, a few hours before,
saying that all was well at home. The telegram said in five words
that she had died suddenly the previous night. There was no
mention of my mother, and I was three days' journey from home.

The news I got on reaching London was this: my mother did not
understand that her daughter was dead, and they were waiting for me
to tell her.

I need not have been such a coward. This is how these two died -
for, after all, I was too late by twelve hours to see my mother
alive.

Their last night was almost gleeful. In the old days that hour
before my mother's gas was lowered had so often been the happiest
that my pen steals back to it again and again as I write: it was
the time when my mother lay smiling in bed and we were gathered
round her like children at play, our reticence scattered on the
floor or tossed in sport from hand to hand, the author become so
boisterous that in the pauses they were holding him in check by
force. Rather woful had been some attempts latterly to renew those
evenings, when my mother might be brought to the verge of them, as
if some familiar echo called her, but where she was she did not
clearly know, because the past was roaring in her ears like a great
sea. But this night was a last gift to my sister. The joyousness