I do not believe she thought much of the ashes as representing the man who had gone away from her.

She may have thought of them as precious, just as she did of a pair of gloves she had mended for him just before his illness, and which she kept always with her, but I believe that of the ashes, as of the gloves, she thought only of what her love had used in life and left behind.

That was the total of it.

It was the heart, the soul, the knowing of her that was gone.
How the Ape, how all the children cared for the small mother now! Never was woman more watched, and guarded and waited upon.

She recognized it all, too, but said very little.