CHAPTER XV.
THAT WE PERISH NOT EPHREM SURPRENANT pushed open the door and stood upon the threshold.
"I have come." He found no other words, and waited there motionless for a few seconds, tongue-tied, while his eyes travelled from Chapdelaine to Maria, from Maria to the children who sat very still and quiet by the table; then he plucked off his cap hastily, as if in amends for his forgetfulness, shut the door behind him and moved across to the bed where the dead woman lay.
They had altered its place, turning the head to the wall and the foot toward the centre of the house, so that it might be approached on both sides.

Close to the wall two lighted candles stood on chairs; one of them set in a large candlestick of white metal which the visitors to the Chapdelaine home had never seen before, while for holding the other Maria had found nothing better than a glass bowl used in the summer time for blueberries and wild raspberries, on days of ceremony.
The candlestick shone, the bowl sparkled in the flames which lighted but feebly the face of the dead.

The days of suffering through which she had passed, or death's final chill had given the features a strange pallor and delicacy, the refinement of a woman bred in the city.

Father and children were at first amazed, and then perceived in this the tremendous consequence of her translation beyond and far above them.
Ephrem.

Surprenant bent his eyes upon the face for a little, and then kneeled.