And, as she gazed down on the girl, it was as if the end of life, with its pathos, its cruelties, its bitterness and its disillusionment, had stopped for a fleeting instant to look back at life in the pride and ignorance of its beginning.
"There was so much moving about, I thought something might have happened," said Miss Amelia apologetically, while Gabriella, closing the door, shut the draught from the staircase.
"Jane had one of her heart attacks," answered the girl.

"I'm so sorry we waked you." But she was thinking while she spoke, "So that is old age--so that is what it means to be old ?" There is a vague compassion in the thought, but it held no terror, for the decay of Miss Amelia seemed as utterly remote and detached from her own life as one of the past ages in history.

The youth in her brain created a radiant illusion of immortality.

By no stretch of imagination could she picture herself like the infirm and loveless creature before her.

Yet she knew, without realizing it, that Miss Amelia had once been young, that she had once even been beautiful.