could think of
something comforting to say. But what is there to say? For her there had
never been anything but stoic silence. The mother hen clucked
unconcernedly at their feet, and with coaxing guttural sounds called the
rest of the chickens to eat a grain. The strong ammonia smell of the
chicken-yard rose in the sunshine. Elly stood perfectly still, the
little ball of yellow down in her hand, her face pale.

Marise looked down on her with infinite sympathy. Her child, flesh of
her flesh, meeting in this uncouth place the revelation of the black
gulf! But she remained silent, not knowing what to say.

Elly spoke in a low voice, "But, Mother, how _can_ he be dead, just so
quick while we were looking at him? Mother, he was alive a minute ago.
He was breathing. He looked at me. He knew me. And in just a minute like
that . . . nothing!"

She looked around her wildly. "_Mother, where has his life gone to?_"

Marise put her arm around the little girl's shoulders tenderly, but she
still only shook her head without a word. She did not know any more than
Elly where his life had gone. And surely loving silence was better than
tinkling words of falseness.

Elly looked up at her, glistening drops of sweat standing on her
temples. "Mother," she asked, urgently, in a loud, frightened whisper,
"Mother, do we die like that? Mother, will _you_ die like that? All in a
moment . . . and then . . . nothing?"

It came like thunder, then, what Marise had never thought to feel. With
a clap, she found that this time she had something to answer, something
to say to Elly. Looking deep, deep into Elly's eyes, she said firmly
with a certainty as profound as it was new to her, "No, Elly, I don't
believe we do die like that . . . all in a moment . . . nothing."

She was astonished by what she said, astonished by the sudden
overflowing of something she had not known was there, but which was so
great that her heart could not contain it, "comme une onde qui bout dans
une urne trop pleine." And she was as moved as she was astonished. Elly
came into her arms with a comforted gasp. They clung to each other
closely, Marise's ears humming with the unfamiliar beauty and intricacy
of that new page at which she had had that instant's glimpse. Here was a
new harmony, a new progression, a new rhythm to which her ear had just
opened . . . heard here in this uncouth place!

* * * * *

That evening, after the children were