Joan
changed her travel-dusty clothes, and then went into the room where her
mother lay, and closed the door. She must have been a beautiful woman.
Now that the fret and the restlessness had left her it had come back to
her. The passionate eyes were closed. Joan kissed the marble lids, and
drawing a chair to the bedside, sat down. It grieved her that she had
never loved her mother--not as one ought to love one's mother,
unquestioningly, unreasoningly, as a natural instinct. For a moment a
strange thought came to her, and swiftly, almost guiltily, she stole
across, and drawing back a corner of the blind, examined closely her own
features in the glass, comparing them with the face of the dead woman,
thus called upon to be a silent witness for or against the living. Joan
drew a sigh of relief and let fall the blind. There could be no
misreading the evidence. Death had smoothed away the lines, given back
youth. It was almost uncanny, the likeness between them. It might have
been her drowned sister lying there. And they had never known one
another.
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