sitting in her armchair, her book would drop from her hands and her mind
would slip from drowsiness into stupor. There was something voluptuous
about the beginning of this state; she would give herself up to it with an
animal pleasure and content.

Sometimes, for long periods, her mind would go backwards, returning,
always returning, to the house in Black's Lane. She would see the row of
elms and the white wall at the end with the green balcony hung out like a
birdcage above the green door. She would see herself, a girl wearing a big
chignon and a little round hat; or sitting in the curly chair with her
feet on the white rug; and her father, slender and straight, smiling half-
amused, while her mother read aloud to them. Or she was a child in a black
silk apron going up Black's Lane. Little audacious thing. She had a
fondness and admiration for this child and her audacity. And always she
saw her mother, with her sweet face between the long, hanging curls,
coming down the garden path, in a wide silver-gray gown trimmed with
narrow bands of black velvet. And she would wake up, surprised to find
herself sitting in a strange room, dressed in a gown with strange sleeves
that ended in old wrinkled hands; for the book that lay in her lap was
Longfellow, open at _Evangeline_.

One day she made Maggie pull off the old, washed-out cretonne covers,
exposing the faded blue rep. She was back in the drawing-room of her
youth. Only one thing was missing. She went upstairs and took the blue egg
out of the spare room and set it in its place on the marble-topped table.
She sat gazing at it a long time in happy, child-like satisfaction. The
blue egg gave reality to her return.

When she saw Maggie coming in with the tea and buttered scones she thought
of her mother.