They went together into the room, already all in order, in the chill and rigid decorum of a chamber of death. All was white and cold. The curtains laid back, the white coverlet folded, a fine embroidered handkerchief covering the spot scarcely indented in the pillow where the head lay. John went in with his light in his hand, though there were candles on the table, in a tumult of personal feeling, which for the moment swept away all the natural emotion which that scene was calculated to call forth. He did not think of what lay there, but of the stranger so near him and yet so distant, so coldly serious, without any grief, only the subdued regret of a spectator, and with that keen observation of himself underneath, like a spectator too, but a spectator almost hostile. He had never known in all his life before what it was to be judged coldly, weighed in the balances and found wanting. His very soul seemed penetrated by the look, which fixed on something, he knew not what, that was hostile in him. Her eyes, as she followed him, searched into him, and he felt nothing but those keen looks going through and through his soul. But when he came face to face with that little waxen image which lay upon the bed, a flood of other feelings poured through the boy’s mind. For the first time he saw that which was Something awful and solemn, yet Nothing. Sometimes the dead retain the looks of life, and lie and smile upon us as if they slept; but sometimes the effect is very different, and, after a long illness, the worn-out body loses all the characteristics of identity. His mother went up to the bed, passing him by, and, without a word, lifted the handkerchief. When John saw what was underneath, he gave a great cry, a cry almost of horror; his limbs trembled under him. ‘They’ve taken her away,’ he said, hoarsely, ‘they’ve taken her away.’ The other spectator said not a word. She knew better. Death was to her no wonder. She had lived long enough to see it in all its aspects. She stood looking down upon the little body, the little, little body shrunken out of all semblance of life; the worn-out garment of long living, never big enough for the soul that had inhabited it, and cast it off as if it had never been hers. ‘No,’ she said at last; ‘they have not taken her away. This is all she has left.’ She took the candle out of John’s trembling hand, and held it so that the light fell on the small head surrounded by the white cap, and the face in which no expression lingered. The room was very strange. The white bed laid out in rigid lines, the small and solemn thing laid therein, the black, tall figure standing by throwing the light down from her hand. She was not like a woman by her mother’s bed-side, but like a solemn spectator expounding the mysteries of life and death.