tore at her, broke her down. Supposing she really died under the
operation? Supposing---- It was cruel to excite and upset her just for
that; it made the pain worse.

Either the operation or the pain, going on and on, stabbing with sharper
and sharper knives; cutting in deeper; all their care, the antiseptics,
the restoratives, dragging it out, giving it more time to torture her.

When the three friends came, Harriett said, "I shall be glad and thankful
when it's all over. I couldn't want to keep her with me, just for this."

Yet she did want it. She was thankful every morning that she came to her
mother's bed and found her alive, lying there, looking at her with her
wonderful smile. She was glad because she still had her.

And now they were giving her morphia. Under the torpor of the drug her
face changed; the muscles loosened, the flesh sagged, the widened, swollen
mouth hung open; only the broad beautiful forehead, the beautiful calm
eyebrows were the same; the face, sallow white, half imbecile, was a mask
flung aside. She couldn't bear to look at it; it wasn't her mother's face;
her mother had died already under the morphia. She had a shock every time
she came in and found it still there.

On the day her mother died she told herself she was glad and thankful. She
met her friends with a little quiet, composed face, saying, "I'm glad and
thankful she's at peace." But she wasn't thankful; she wasn't glad. She
wanted her back again. And she reproached herself, one minute for having
been glad, and the next for wanting her.

She consoled herself by thinking of the sacrifices she had made, how she