see you looking back at me out of marble and bronze. And here, in
this garden, you tried to give me more--"

The infinitely removed thunder was like the continued echo of his
voice. There was a stirring of the leaves above her head; and the
light that had shone against the house in Elouise Lowrie's window
was suddenly extinguished. All that she felt was weariness and a
confused dejection, the weight of an insuperable disappointment. She
could say nothing. Words, even Pleydon's, seemed to her vain. The
solid fact of Arnaud, of what Dodge, more than seven years before,
had robbed her, put everything else aside, crushed it.

She realized that she would never get from life what supremely
repaid the suffering of other women, made up for them the failure of
practically every vision. She was sorry for herself, yes, and for
Dodge Pleydon. Yet he had his figures in metal and stone; his sense
of the importance of his work had increased enormously; and, well,
there were Lowrie and Vigne; it would be difficult, every one
agreed, to find better or handsomer children. But they seemed no
more than shadows or colored mist. This terrified her--what a
hopelessly deficient woman she must be! But even in the profundity
of her depression the old vibration of nameless joy reached her
heart.

In the morning there was a telegram from Judith Feldt, saying that
her mother was dangerously sick, and she had lunch on the train for
New York. The apartment seemed stuffy; there was a trace of
dinginess, neglect, about the black velvet rugs and hangings. Her
mother, she found, had pneumonia; there was practically no chance of
her recovering. Linda sat for a short while by the elder's bed,