Rose showed no interest or surprise. “Caroline is so much worse.” Henrietta felt a pang at her forgetfulness. “She is very ill. I was afraid you might not be back in time. She has been asking for you.” “I’ve been to Wellsborough, to a concert,” Henrietta insisted. “Is she as bad as that, Aunt Rose? But she’ll get better, won’t she?” “Come with me and say good night to her. “Rose took Henrietta’s hand. “How warm you are,” she said, in wonder that anything could be less cold than Caroline soon would be. Henrietta’s fingers tightened round the living hand. “She’s not going to die, is she?” “Yes, she’s dying,” Rose said quietly. “Oh, but she can’t,” Henrietta protested. “She doesn’t want to. She’ll hate it so.” It was impossible to imagine Aunt Caroline without her parties, without her clothes, she would find it intolerably dull to be dead. “Perhaps she will get better.” Rose said nothing. They crossed the landing and entered the dim room. Caroline lay in the middle of the big bed: with her hair lank and uncurled she was hardly recognizable and strangely ugly. Her body seemed to have dwindled, but her features were strong and harsh, and Henrietta said to herself, “This is the real Aunt Caroline, not what I thought, not what I thought. I’ve never seen her before.” She wondered how she had ever dared to joke with her: she had been a funny, vain old woman without much sensibility, immune from much that others suffered, and now she was a mere human creature, breathing with difficulty and in pain. Henrietta stood by the bed, saying and doing nothing: Rose had slipped away; the nurse was quietly busy at a table and Aunt Sophia was kneeling before a high-backed chair with her elbows on the cushioned seat, her face in her hands. She was praying; it was as bad as that. Her back, the sash-encircled waist, the thick hair, looked like those of a young girl. She was praying. Henrietta looked again at Aunt Caroline’s grey face and saw that the eyes had opened, the lips were smiling a little. “Good child,” she said, with immense difficulty, as though she had been seeking those words for a long time and had at last fitted them to her thought. Sophia stirred, dropped her hands and looked round: the nurse came forward with a little crackle of starched clothes. “Say good night to her and go.” Henrietta leaned over the empty space of bed and kissed Caroline on the temple. “Good night, dear Aunt Caroline,” she said softly. There was no answer. The eyes were closed again and the harsh breathing went on cruelly, like waves falling back from a pebbled shore, and Henrietta felt the dampness of death on her lips. No, Aunt Caroline would not get better.