something quite straightforward and commonplace, and I can't find
'em."

She began to pace up and down the room, snatching up her duster; but
she was too much annoyed to find any relief, as yet, in polishing the
backs of books.

"Besides," she said, giving the sheet she had written to Katharine, "I
don't believe this'll do. Did your grandfather ever visit the
Hebrides, Katharine?" She looked in a strangely beseeching way at her
daughter. "My mind got running on the Hebrides, and I couldn't help
writing a little description of them. Perhaps it would do at the
beginning of a chapter. Chapters often begin quite differently from
the way they go on, you know." Katharine read what her mother had
written. She might have been a schoolmaster criticizing a child's
essay. Her face gave Mrs. Hilbery, who watched it anxiously, no ground
for hope.

"It's very beautiful," she stated, "but, you see, mother, we ought to
go from point to point--"

"Oh, I know," Mrs. Hilbery exclaimed. "And that's just what I can't
do. Things keep coming into my head. It isn't that I don't know
everything and feel everything (who did know him, if I didn't?), but I
can't put it down, you see. There's a kind of blind spot," she said,
touching her forehead, "there. And when I can't sleep o' nights, I
fancy I shall die without having done it."

From exultation she had passed to the depths of depression which the
imagination of her death aroused. The depression communicated itself