began to ascend in wavering breaths over the
houses, and these slowly thickened, until they were as round and
straight as columns, and instead of striking upon pale white blinds, the
sun shone upon dark windows, beyond which there was depth and space.

The sun had been up for many hours, and the great dome of air was warmed
through and glittering with thin gold threads of sunlight, before any
one moved in the hotel. White and massive it stood in the early light,
half asleep with its blinds down.

At about half-past nine Miss Allan came very slowly into the hall, and
walked very slowly to the table where the morning papers were laid, but
she did not put out her hand to take one; she stood still, thinking,
with her head a little sunk upon her shoulders. She looked curiously
old, and from the way in which she stood, a little hunched together and
very massive, you could see what she would be like when she was really
old, how she would sit day after day in her chair looking placidly in
front of her. Other people began to come into the room, and to pass her,
but she did not speak to any of them or even look at them, and at last,
as if it were necessary to do something, she sat down in a chair, and
looked quietly and fixedly in front of her. She felt very old this
morning, and useless too, as if her life had been a failure, as if it
had been hard and laborious to no purpose. She did not want to go on
living, and yet she knew that she would. She was so strong that she
would live to be a very old woman. She would probably live to be eighty,
and as she was now fifty, that left thirty years more for her to
live. She turned her hands over and over in her lap and looked at them
curiously; her old hands, that had done so much work for her. There did
not seem to be much point in it all; one went on, of course one went
on. . . . She looked up to see Mrs. Thornbury standing beside her, with
lines drawn upon her forehead, and her lips parted as if she were about
to ask a question.

Miss Allan anticipated her.

"Yes," she said. "She died this morning, very early, about three
o'clock."

Mrs. Thornbury made a little exclamation, drew her lips together, and
the tears rose in her eyes. Through them she looked at the hall which
was now laid with great breadths of sunlight, and at the careless,
casual groups of people who were standing beside the solid arm-chairs
and tables. They looked to her unreal, or as people look who remain
unconsc