dead.
There's something like silence lying over everything. It means she's
dead."

It was her impulse to throw her arms about his neck and bid him weep if
he wished on her breast, but feeling his stillness, his nearly
unbreathing immobility, she kept herself from him. To those who fall and
hurt themselves one runs with comfort; by those who lie dangerously
stricken by a disease one sits and waits.

"Sit down and take a bit of breakfast," she bade him softly. He sank
into a chair at the table, lumpishly, as if his limbs had grown thick
and lithic, while she poured out a cup of tea and cut some ham. Her
flesh was weeping for Marion, who had been quick, who now was dead; but
the core of her was a void. She cut him a nice feathery slice, unbroken
all the way from the bone to the outer rim of bread-crumb-freckled fat;
and through the void there shot the thought, trivial yet tremendously
exultant: "Now that Marion is gone I shall always look after his food."
He drew his brows together and groaned softly. Hawkishly she looked
round to see what was distressing him. It was, of course, Roger howling
in Poppy's lap.... "Oh, my darling mummie!" It must be stopped.

"Roger," she said kindly, "sit forward for your breakfast."

He raised a dispirited nose, red with weeping, and shook his head
mournfully. "No, thank you. It wouldn't be of any use. I couldn't keep a
thing on my stomach."

"But what about Miss Poppy?" she asked guilefully. "She must be wearying
for her breakfast after the night she's spent in that chair."

That brought him off his feet, as she had known it would. "Oh, poor
Poppy!" he cried. "Oh, poor Poppy!" and led her to the table.

Richard ate and drank for some moments; he seemed very hungry. Then he
laid down his knife and fork and said: "Ellen, when your mother died did
you feel like this? As if ... the walls of your life had fallen in?"

"Yes, yes, my love, so terribly alone."

"Alone, alone," he repeated. "I am so selfish. I can think of nothing
but my own loneliness. I can't think of her."

"Well, never heed, my dear, my own dear. She wouldn't want you to
worry."

"Oh, but I must think this out!" he exclaimed in a shocked, dreary tone.
"It's so important...." He looked up at the electric light and grumbled:
"Oh, that damned light makes it worse!" and rose to restore the room to
the sallowness of the morning.

When he sat down again he would not eat, but leaned his head on his
hands and his elbows