then blow out her candle and kiss her mother. And her mother would say:
"God bless you, my darling, and keep you safe."
It was this blessing which Hildegarde missed now before she went to sleep. It was, indeed, hard to get to sleep without it. And it was dreadful to have that other little bed empty beside her—dreadful, dreadful, dreadful—
She tried to reach out in the dark to that vague thing, her mother's soul. Love never died, her mother had said. It lived on and on until eternity. Hildegarde had always believed in guardian angels—that they were around her, and the saints—
Bless the bed that I lie on—
But now there was no one around her; the angels had fled, and the saints. There was nothing out there in the immeasurable dark; her mother had been caught on the wave of some vast sea of blackness which had swallowed her up.
Hildegarde had kept, however, the awfulness of this feeling to herself. It would have been impossible to talk about it to Aunt Catherine and Aunt Olivia. They were good-hearted, but uncomprehending. There was one person who might have understood, but he was away at the State College. Hildegarde had felt that when he heard of her bereavement he would come to her. But he had not come.
So she had gone to the cemetery in the carriage with her aunts, and had come back to the feast which had been prepared for the relatives and friends who had
