was a painful one and might well have been dropped, but he did not dare to talk of anything but our mother, and we all strove to carry on the conversation as long as possible. But my brother and I had not seen each other for years; he had come back from India after a long absence. Nor, I think, had I seen my sister since she was married, and that was a long while ago; she had had children; I had not seen her before in middle age. We were anxious to ask each other questions, to hear each other's news, and we were anxious to see the landscape that we had not seen, at least not together, for many years; and I remember how we were tempted out of the house by the soft sunlight floating on the lawn. The same gentle day full of mist and sunlight that I had watched since early morning had been prolonged, and the evening differed hardly from the morning; the exaltation in the air was a little more intense. My mother died certainly on the most beautiful day I had ever seen, the most winsome, the most white, the most wanton, as full of love as a girl in a lane who stops to gather a spray of hawthorn. How many times, like many another, did I wonder why death should have come to any one on such a bridal-like day. That we should expect Nature to prepare a decoration in accordance with our moods is part of the old savagery. Through reason we know that Nature cares for us not at all, that our sufferings concern her not in the least, but our instincts conform to the time when the sun stood still and angels were about. It was impossible for us not to wonder why the black shadow of death should have fallen across the white radiant day. I say "us," for my brother no doubt pondered the coincidence, though he did not speak his thoughts to me. No one dares to speak such thoughts; they are the foolish substance of ourselves which we try to conceal from others, forgetting that we are all alike. The day moved slowly from afternoon to evening, like a bride hidden within a white veil, her hands and her veil filled with white blossom; but a black bird, tiny like a humming-bird, had perched upon a bunch of blossom, and I seemed to lose sight of the day in the sinister black speck that had intruded itself upon it. No doubt I could think of something better were I to set my mind upon doing so, but that is how I thought the day I walked on the lawn with my brother, ashamed and yet compelled to talk of what our lives had been during the years that separated us. How could one be overpowered with grief amid so many distracting circumstances? Everything I saw was at once new and old. I had come among my brother and sister suddenly, not having seen them, as I have said, for many years; this was our first meeting since childhood, and we were assembled in the house where we had all been born. The ivy grown all over one side of the house, the disappearance of the laburnum, the gap in the woods--these things were new; but the