she said

By the bedside the children already stood in a weeping group.

‘Oh, mother!’ cried the daughters, almost in hysterics, weeping loudly.

But the mother went forward. The dead man lay in repose, as if gently asleep, so gently, so peacefully, like a young man sleeping in purity. He was still warm. She stood looking at him in gloomy, heavy silence, for some time.

‘Ay,’ she said bitterly, at length, speaking as if to the unseen witnesses of the air. ‘You’re dead.’ She stood for some minutes in silence, looking down. ‘Beautiful,’ she asserted, ‘beautiful as if life had never touched you — never touched you. God send I look different. I hope I shall look my years, when I am dead. Beautiful, beautiful,’