She remembered how she had kept apart from him, enclosed
herself in a reserve that he should never break. She remembered the
times when he had scolded her, coldly, bitterly, and she had stood,
her face as a rock, her heart beating but her body without movement,
then had turned and gone silently from the room. All her wicked,
cold heart that in some strange way cared for love but could not
make those movements towards others that would show that it cared.
What was it in her? Would she always, through life, miss the things
for which she longed through her coldness and obstinacy?
She took her father's photograph, stared at it, gazed into it, held
it in an agony of remorse. She shivered in the cold of her room but
did not know it. Her candle, caught in some draught, blew out, and
instantly the white world without leapt in upon her and her room was
lit with a strange unearthly glow. She saw nothing but her father.
At last she fell asleep in the chair, clutching in her hand the
photograph.
Thus her aunt found her, later in the evening. She was touched by
the figure, the shabby black frock, the white tired face.
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