She did not dream.
Her mother returned to her place by the fire, and sat down in a
melancholy heap. She felt anxious and utterly lost, without place or
purpose in the world.
For a change had in fact taken place in her, with or without her
consent. In the troubled hours since her daughter's flight, it had
become impossible to think of killing and tearing down. Too clearly
did she see, and feel, and remember all the dark, destructive forces
that pull the living back to earth, wholly without a woman's schemes.
And she felt this to the core of her being, because she knew that she,
too, would soon return to dust.
Because her body was at long last giving out. Beside the painful
angina which had plagued her since the night of the Stone, she felt in
these bitter, infinite hours a dizziness and blurring of vision which
she knew to be the forerunner of stroke.
Her daughter had not yet realized her condition, and for this, at
least, she was grateful. As her own life inexorably diminished, she
found she thought less and less of herself---of the past---and more
and more of her daughter's future.
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