Perhaps to a good many young people comes this haunting sense of the sadness of life to older people.
Especially when I thought of Eric I felt sharp pity for the race of older women—that grey majority for whom the Great Radiance had faded little by little; or those like my mother, out of whose hand the torch had been struck sharply and the darkness swallowed.
She very seldom touched the piano at this time; but often, when I was with her, that old feeling, which belonged to the evenings when she sang to herself, came back to me; a feeling of overwhelming sadness—and a fear.
Not even my secret could console me at such moments.
Eric will never come back, I said to myself; or he will come back with a wife. And, with that start I had learned from my mother—where was Betty?
She was late.
She was very late.
Unaccountably, alarmingly late.
CHAPTER XIV
WHERE IS BETTINA?
She had come running in a little after six o'clock to ask if we mightn't, both of us, go and dine with Hermione. I said I didn't see why Bettina shouldn't go, but we could not ask till my mother was awake; she had been having broken nights, and had just fallen asleep. So Bettina waited—nearly half an hour; still my mother slept. Then Bettina went away softly and dressed, "so as to be ready, in case."