about her. The world did not matter. There was no world. I think there
was nothing left anywhere but the grave she had just staggered blindly
away from. I felt as if she had been lying sobbing and writhing and
beating the new turf on it with her poor hands, and I somehow knew that
it had been a child's grave she had been to visit and had felt she left
to utter loneliness when she turned away.

It was because I thought this that I wished she had not seemed so
unconscious of and indifferent to the child who was with her and clung
to her black dress as if it could not bear to let her go. This one was
alive at least, even if she had lost the other one, and its little face
was so wistful! It did not seem fair to forget and ignore it, as if
it were not there. I felt as if she might have left it behind on the
platform if it had not so clung to her skirt that it was almost dragged
into the railway carriage with her. When she sank into her seat she did
not even lift the poor little thing into the place beside her, but left
it to scramble up as best it could. She buried her swollen face in her
handkerchief and sobbed in a smothered way as if she neither saw, heard,
nor felt any living thing near her.

How I wished she would remember the poor child and let it comfort her!
It really was trying to do it in its innocent way. It pressed close to
her side, it looked up imploringly, it kissed her arm and her crape
veil over and over again, and tried to attract her attention. It was
a little, lily-fair creature not more than five or six years old and
perhaps too young to express what it wanted to say. It could only cling
to her and kiss her black dress, and seem to beg her to remember that
it, at least, was a living thing. But she was too absorbed in her
anguish to know that it was in the world. She neither looked at nor
touched it, and at last it sat with its cheek against her sleeve, softly