ed with what seemed puddles of lead. The air was so washed and pure, it made me bilious. But we went, as usual, to the wood and the ice-house, and then to the chapel and the graves. When we reached her mother''s grave she sat a little near it, and gazed at the stone. It was dark with rain. The grass between the graves was thin and beaten. Two or three great black birds walked carefully about us, looking for worms. I watched them peck. Then I think I must have sighed, for Maud looked at me and her face—that had been hard, through frowning—grew gentle. She said,
''You are sad, Sue.''
I shook my head.
''I think you are,'' she said. ''That''s my fault. I have brought you to
this lonely place, time after time, thinking only of myself. But you have known what it is, to have a mother''s love and then to lose it.''
I looked away.
''It''s all right,'' I said. ''It doesn''t matter.''
She said, ''You are brave ..."
I thought of my mother, dying game on the scaffold; and I suddenly wished—what I had never wished before—that she had been some ordinary girl, that had died in a regular way. As if she guessed it, Maud said quietly now,
''And what—it doesn''t trouble you, my asking?—what did your mother die of?''
I thought for a moment. I said at last that she had swallowed a pin, that had choked her.
I really did know a woman that died that way. Maud stared at me, and put her hand to her throat. Then she gazed down at her own mother''s tomb.