The windows were open, and through the
closed shutters floated a pale greenish light and the sound of dead
leaves rustling softly in the garden.
She had hardly entered before the door opened noiselessly again, and
Kesiah came in bringing some white roses in a basket. Drawing a little
away, Molly watched her while she arranged the flowers with light and
guarded movements, as if she were afraid of disturbing the sleeper. Of
what was she thinking? the girl wondered. Was she grieving for her lost
youth, with its crushed possibilities of happiness, or for the rich
young life before her, which had left its look of arrested energy
still clinging to the deserted features? Was she saddened by the tragic
mystery of Death or by the more poignant, the more inscrutable mystery
of Life? Did she mourn all the things that had not been that did not
matter, or all the things that had been that mattered even less?
Lifting her eyes from Kesiah's face, she fixed them on a small old
picture of the elder Jonathan, which hung under a rusty sword above the
bed. For the first time there came to her an impulse of compassion for
the man who was her father.
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