"I hope you'll understand my coming, Sabina," she said.
She was clad, as usual, in a grey Harris tweed, and the elder wondered why she did not wear black. Estelle's face was haggard and worn, with much suffering. But it seemed that the last dregs of her own cup were not yet drunk, for an excruciating problem faced her. There was none to help her solve it, yet she took it to Sabina.
"I thought you'd come, sooner or later. This is a thing beyond any human power to make better. God knows I mourn for you far more than I mourn for myself. I don't mourn for myself. Long ago I saw that the living can't be happy, though the dead may be. The dead may be—we'll hope it for them."
"It's death to me as well as to him," said Estelle simply. "As far as I'm concerned, I feel that I'm dead from now and shall live on as somebody different—somebody I don't know yet. All that we were and had and hoped—everything is gone with him. The future was to be spent in trying to do good things. We shared the same ideas about it. But that's all over. I'm left—single-handed, Sabina."
"Yes, I know how you feel."
"I can't bear to think of it yet. I didn't come to talk about him, or myself. I came to talk about Abel."
"I can't tell you anything about him."
"I know you know nothing. I think I know more than you do."
"Know more of him than I do?" asked the mother. There was almost a flash of jealousy in her voice. But it faded and she sighed.
"No, no. You needn't fret for him. They may find him, or they may not; but they'll not find him alive."