ly crammed with those
jostling, shouting, battling thoughts. She slid from the bed and went to
the window, leaning far out from it, and looking up at the sky,
immeasurably high and black, studded thick with stars.

They looked down disdainfully at her fever and misery. A chilling
consolation fell from them upon her, like a cold dew. She felt herself
shrink to imperceptible proportions. What did they matter, the struggles
of the maggots who crawled about the folds of the globe, itself the most
trifling and insignificant of all the countless worlds which people the
aimless disorder of the universe? What difference did it make? Anything
they did was so soon indistinguishable from anything else. The easiest
way . . . to yield to whatever had the strongest present force . . . that
was as good as any other way in the great and blind confusion of it all.

After she had gone back to bed, she could still see the silent multitude
of stars above her, enormous, remote beyond imagination, and it was
under their thin, cold, indifferent gaze that she finally fell asleep.

CHAPTER XXII

EUGENIA DOES WHAT SHE CAN

July 22.

Agnes brought upstairs an armful of white roses. "The lady that visits
at your house, she brought them from your garden and she wants to see
you if she can."

Eugenia of course. That was unexpected. She must have made an effort to
do that, she who hated sickness and death and all dark things.

"Yes, tell her I will be down in a moment. Take her in a glass of cold
water, too, will you please, Agnes. The walk over here must have been
terribly hot for her."

The roses showed that. They were warm to the touch and as she looked at
them intently, at their white clear faces, familiar to her as those of
human beings, bent on her with a mute message from the garden, she saw
they had begun to droop imperceptibly, that the close, fine texture of
their petals had begun ever so slightly to wither. She sprinkled them,
put their stems deep into water and went downstairs, wiping her moist
hands on her handkerchief.

Eugenia in mauve organdie stood up from the deep Windsor chair where she
had sunk down, and came forward silently to greet her. They kissed each
other ceremoniously in token of the fact that a death lay between them
and the last time they had met . . . was it only yesterday morning?

"Were you able to sleep at all, Marise? You look shockingly tired."

"Oh yes, thanks. I slept well enough. Are the ch