Cecily regarded her daughter with some worry as she climbed up to see if she could catch a glimpse of the departing car from the window. She often wondered how she was going to explain all this to the children. Would they understand or would they, like Della, blame her, or, like Mrs. Harrison and her father, think she was foolish? “But I didn’t do it,” she protested to herself. “It was Dick who insisted. I couldn’t keep him from going. Unless I was willing to throw everything in life which seems worth while to me into the discard. Everything that is worth while to anybody. The standards of life that must be maintained.” She thought of Della, a mass of provocative lingerie. She did not want this sturdy little figure in blue linen to grow up to be like that. If one had to give up everything to prevent Dorothea’s becoming like that, it was worth it. The extravagance of her conclusions did not strike her as false just then. She topped her sacrifice with some self-glorification, and taking Dorothea out into the garden, played with her until dinner time. But in the empty evening she found the self-glory fading. She was alone. She had failed. It was often like that. CHAPTER XXIII Mrs. Horton’s death came just before the time when Matthew had planned to leave for Washington. A succession of complications had hastened it. Three days before it came, Fliss knew that it was imminent and she spent those days sitting beside her mother for long periods, her face white and drawn, but her courage sustained as it always was in a crisis. Death seemed on no great errand here in this shabby little flat, breaking no heart, effecting no terrible cleavage. Yet the solemnity of the struggle was not altered by the fact that it was only a commonplace, middle-aged woman who was fighting for the chance to keep on going to the moving pictures, gossiping, living in trivialities. Death, disregarding human gradations of importance, was choosing this soul gravely, solemnly. And Fliss, shivering a little by her mother’s bed, watched and learned, and perhaps in her quick, practical way got a firmer grip on life from this first intimacy with death. She would have nothing to do with the funeral arrangements. Until the end she had stayed by her mother, but after it was over and her mother was gone, Ellen and Mrs. Ellis managed the details of burial. Mr. Horton remained unobtrusive. Vaguely encouraging his wife, he had also stayed beside her and she had turned to him rather than to Fliss. Later he went out and bought a box of red carnations, giving them to Ellen to arrange near his wife. “She always liked carnations,” he said.