She herself opened her bed, lay down on it resolutely, and blew out her candle.
Instantly the room seemed suffocatingly full of a thousand flying, disconnected pictures. The talk with Agnes had changed her mood. The dull, leaden weight of that numbing burden of inarticulate pain was broken into innumerable fragments. For a time, before she could collect herself to self-control, her thoughts whirled and roared in her head like a machine disconnected from its work, racing furiously till it threatens to shake itself to pieces. Everything seemed to come at once.
Frank Warner was dead. What would that mean to Nelly Powers?
Had there been enough bread left in the house till someone could drive the Ford to Ashley and buy some more?
Ought she to wear mourning for Cousin Hetty?
What had happened on the Eagle Rocks? Had Frank and 'Gene quarreled, or had 'Gene crept up behind Frank as he sighted along the compass?
How would they get Cousin Hetty's friends from the station at Ashley, out to the house, such feeble old people as they were? It would be better to have the services all at the church.
Had anything been decided about hymns? Someone had said something about it, but what had she . . . oh, of course that had been the moment when Touclé had come in, and Mr. Bayweather had rushed away to tell Frank's mother. Frank's mother. His mother! Suppose that were to happen to Mark, or Paul? No, not such thoughts. They mustn't be let in at all, or you went mad.
Was it true that Elly cared nothing about her, that children didn't, for grown-ups, that she was nothing in Elly's life?
She was glad that Touclé had come back. There would be someone to help Neale with the children. . . .