Why put up a fight for something that didn't count?
Why continue mechanically to live when living meant waiting for death?
Why not grasp this opportunity of leaving it actually, at once, and urge Gilbert on to stop the beating of her wounded and contrite heart?
...

Death, the great consoler.

Sleep, endless sleep and peace.
But as she stood there, tempted, with the weight of Martin's discarded armor on her shoulders and the sense of failure hanging like a millstone round her neck, she saw the creeper bursting into buds on the wall beneath the window of her old room, caught the merry glint of young green on the trees below her hill, heard the piping of birds to their nesting mates, the eager breeze singing among the waving grasses and the low sweet crooning of baby voices--felt a tiny greedy hand upon her breast, was bewildered with a sudden overwhelming rush of mother-longing ...

young, young?
Oh, God, she was young, and in the springtime with its stirring sap, its call to life and action, its urge to create, to build, its ringing cry to be up and doing, serving, sowing, tending--the pains of winter forgotten, hope in the warming sun.
She must live.

Even without Martin she must live.