It is as if she went away into another life, far away from ours; and when she comes home again she is like one in a dream.

Will you dare to tell her ?" "Yes, I will go," she said.
Yet with very slow and reluctant steps Phebe climbed the staircase, pausing long at the window midway, which overlooked the wide and sunny landscape in the distance, and the garden just below.

She watched the children busy at their little plots of ground, utterly unconscious of the utter ruin that had befallen them.

How lovely and how happy they looked! She could have cried out aloud, a bitter and lamentable cry.

But as yet she must not yield to the flood of her own grief; she must keep it back until she was at home again, in her solitary home, where nobody could hear her sobs and cries.