She packed his bag with her own hands, set out his furs for the swift flight to Paris, and waved to him from the window as he went down the little path towards the junction.

He would be gone three days, he said.
It was on the evening of the second day that she fell ill; and Mabel, running upstairs, in alarm at the message of the servant, found her rather flushed and agitated in her chair.
"It is nothing, my dear," said the old lady tremulously; and she added the description of a symptom or two.
Mabel got her to bed, sent for the doctor, and sat down to wait.
She was sincerely fond of the old lady, and had always found her presence in the house a quiet sort of delight.

The effect of her upon the mind was as that of an easy-chair upon the body.

The old lady was so tranquil and human, so absorbed in small external matters, so reminiscent now and then of the days of her youth, so utterly without resentment or peevishness.

It seemed curiously pathetic to the girl to watch that quiet old spirit approach its extinction, or rather, as Mabel believed, its loss of personality in the reabsorption into the Spirit of Life which informed the world.