The
occupants of the box kept up a jesting colloquy.
Impossible to read the burial service over each of the dead
separately; time would not allow it. Emma and Kate found themselves
crowded among a number of sobbing women, just in time to seat
themselves before the service began. Neither of them had moist eyes;
the elder looked about the chapel with blank gaze, often shivering
with cold; Emma's face was bent downwards, deadly pale, set in
unchanging woe. A world had fallen to pieces about her; she did not
feel the ground upon which she trod; there seemed no way from amid
the ruins. She had no strong religious faith; a wail in the darkness
was all the expression her heart could attain to; in the present
anguish she could not turn her thoughts to that far vision of a life
hereafter. All day she had striven to realise that a box of wood
contained all that was left of her sister. The voice of the
clergyman struck her ear with meaningless monotony. Not immortality
did she ask for, but one more whisper from the lips that could not
speak, one throb of the heart she had striven so despairingly to
warm against her own.
Kate was plucking at her arm, for the service was over, and
unconsciously she was impeding people who wished to pass from the
seats. With difficulty she rose and walked; the cold seemed to have
checked the flow of her blood; she noticed the breath rising from
her mouth, and wondered that she could have so much whilst those
dear lips were breathless.
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