Page:Twilight of the Souls (1917).djvu/291

Rh did not say it. On the contrary, she said, very wearily:

"Well, I hope that you will all be more particular about coming next Sunday . . . all of you, all of you. . . . I want you all here. . . . I want to have you all around me."

Then they left her alone, earlier than usual, and the old woman did not ring at once for the servants to put out the lights, to go to bed, but first wandered for a little while longer through her large, empty, still brightly-lit rooms. How much had changed in the many, many years that very slowly accumulated about her and seemed to bury her under their grey mounds! Sometimes it seemed to her as if nothing had changed, as if the Sunday evenings always remained the same, even though this or that one might be absent for one reason or another. But sometimes, as to-day, it seemed to her as if everything, everything had changed, with hardly perceptible changes. Did she alone remain unchanged? . ..

She had now reached the little boudoir: hardly any of the cakes had been touched; above them hung the fine portrait of her husband, in the gold-laced uniform, with the orders. He was dead. . . and with him all their grandeur, which she had learnt to love because of him, through him. . . . She wandered back to the other rooms: there were portraits on the walls, photographs in frames on the tables