e
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
to Katharine. How impotent they were, fiddling about all day long with
papers! And the clock was striking eleven and nothing done! She watched
her mother, now rummaging in a great brass-bound box which stood by her
table, but she did not go to her help. Of course, Katharine reflected,
her mother had now lost some paper, and they would waste the rest of the
morning looking for it. She cast her eyes down in irritation, and read
again her mother's musical sentences about the silver gulls, and the
roots of little pink flowers washed by pellucid streams, and the blue
mists of hyacinths, until she was struck by her mother's silence. She
raised her eyes. Mrs. Hilbery had emptied a portfolio containing old
photographs over her table, and was looking from one to another.

"Surely, Katharine," she said, "the men were far handsomer in those days
than they are now, in spite of their odious whiskers? Look at old John
Graham, in his white waistcoat--look at Uncle Harley. That's Peter the
manservant, I suppose. Uncle John brought him back from India."

Katharine looked at her mother, but did not stir or answer. She had
suddenly become very angry, with a rage which their relationship made
silent, and therefore doubly powerful and critical. She felt all the
unfairness of the claim which her mother tacitly made to her time and
sympathy, and what Mrs. Hilbery took, Katharine thought bitterly, she
wasted. Then, in a flash, she remembered that she had still to tell her
about Cyril's misbehavior. Her anger immediately dissipated itself; it
broke like some wave that has gathered itself high above the rest; the
waters were resumed into the sea again, and Katharine felt once more
full of peace and solicitude,