"I hope you are keeping well; and I know you are being brave."
"I am alive," she said, "but my life has none the less ended."
"You must not think or feel so. Let me say a thing that comforted me in the mouth of another when I lost my mother. It was an old clergyman who said it. 'Think what the dead would wish and try to please them.' It doesn't sound much; but if you consider, it is helpful."
The boat was speedy and she soon slipped out between the historic castles that stood on either bank of the entrance to the harbour.
Mrs. Pendean spoke.
"All this loveliness and peace seem to make my heart more sore. When people suffer, they should go where nature suffers too—to bleak, sad regions."
"You must occupy yourself. You must try to lose yourself in work—in working your fingers to the bone if need be. There is nothing like mental and physical toil at a time of suffering."
"That is only a drug. You might as well drink, or take opium. I wouldn't run away from my grief if I could. I owe it to the dead."
"You are not a coward. You must live and make the world happier for your life."
She smiled for the first time—a flicker, that lightened her beauty for a moment and quickly died.