“Ran to her mother to cry.” That’s a thing not to pass over without a stop. Lucky, lucky Rosalie to have one to whom to take her grief! You can imagine her small heart’s twistings by those days of sorrow, of terrifying and mysterious and dreadful things that the child never could clearly have understood; of grief, of mourning; of atmosphere most eerie made of whispers, of tiptoe treading, of shrouded windows, of conversations, as of conspirators, shut off with “Not in front of Rosalie.” “Hush, not now. Here’s Rosalie.” Yes, twisting stuff that; but in that “ran to her mother to cry” something that much more dreadfully twists the heart than those. Those were for Rosalie--they are for all--but frets upon the sands of time that each most kind expunging day, flowing from dawn to sunset like a tide, heals and obliterates. There are no common griefs, and death’s a common grief, that can be drawn above that tide’s highwater mark. But there’s that sentence: “Rosalie ran to her mother to cry.” That’s of the aching voids of life, deep-seated like a cancer, that no tide reaches. That twists the heart to hear it because--O happy Rosalie!--the aching thing in life is not having where you can take your weariness. Your successes, your triumphs, there are a hundred eyes to shine with yours in those. Oh, it is the defeats you want where to tell--some one you can take the defeats to, the failures, the lost things; the lamps that are gone out, the hopes that are ashes, the springs that spring no more, the secret sordid things that eat you up, that hedge you all about, that draw you down. Those! To have some one to tell those to! Yes, there’s a thought that comes with living: Let who may receive a man’s triumphs; to whom a soul can take its defeats, that one has the imprint of Godhood. They walk near God. Awfully frightening days followed for Rosalie. There wasn’t a room that wasn’t dark and frightening with all the blinds down, and wasn’t a voice that wasn’t dark and frightening, all in whispers; and then came this that closed them and that was like a finger pressed right down on Rosalie. There was that Rosalie in the church at the funeral service. She sat at the inner end of the pew with Hilda beside her. The coffin had stood before the altar all night, with the lamps lit all night, and Rosalie believed her father had stayed with it all night. He was struck right down by what had happened, Rosalie’s father. She had heard him, when Anna lay on the bed, and he crouched beside her, crying out loud, “I hated my lot! O God, I was blind to this my child that shared my lot!”