Page:The Painted Veil - Maugham - 1925.djvu/283

 freshly washed linen, which Kitty remembered as characteristic of her mother’s room.

Mrs. Garstin lay on the bed, her hands folded across her breast with a meekness which in life she would have had no patience with. With her strong sharp features, the cheeks hollow with suffering and the temples sunken, she looked handsome and even imposing. Death had robbed her face of its meanness and left only an impression of character. She might have been a Roman empress. It was strange to Kitty that of the dead persons she had seen this was the only one who in death seemed to preserve a look as though that clay had been once a habitation of the spirit. Grief she could not feel, for there had been too much bitterness between her mother and herself to leave in her heart any deep feeling of affection; and looking back on the girl she had been she knew that it was her mother who had made her what she was. But when she looked at that hard, domineering and ambitious woman who lay there so still and silent with all her petty aims frustrated by death, she was aware of a vague pathos. She had schemed and intrigued all her life and never had she desired anything but what was base and unworthy. Kitty wondered whether perhaps in some other sphere she looked upon her earthly course with consternation.

Doris came in.

“I thought you’d come by this train. I felt I must look in for a moment. Isn’t it dreadful? Poor darling mother.”

Bursting into tears, she flung herself into Kitty’s