Miss Horn still faced her, supporting herself by her spread hands pressed down on to the table. Her eyes had a look of gentle, helpless interrogation, as if she said, "What are you going to do about it?"
She did all the necessary things; asked for a telegram form, filled it in: "Send Details, MARY OLIVIER"; and addressed it to Symonds of "E" Company. And all the time, while her hand moved over the paper, she was thinking, "I shall have to tell Mamma."
III.
The five windows of the house stared out at her across the Green. She avoided them by cutting through Horn's yard and round by the Back Lane into the orchard. She was afraid that her mother would see her before she had thought how she would tell her that Mark was dead. She shut herself into her room to think.
She couldn't think.
She dragged herself from the window seat to the chair by the writing-table and from the chair to the bed.
She could still feel her heart staggering and stopping. Once she thought it was going to stop altogether. She had a sudden pang of joy. "If it would stop altogether—I should go to Mark. Nothing would matter. I shouldn't have to tell Mamma that he's dead." But it always went on again.
She thought of Mark now without any feeling at all except that bodily distress. Her mind was fixed in one centre of burning, lucid agony. Mamma.
"I can't tell her. I can't. It'll kill her…. I don't see how she's to live if Mark's dead…. I shall send for Aunt Bella. She can do it. Or I might ask Mrs. Waugh. Or Mr. Rollitt."
She knew she wouldn't do any of these things. She would have to tell her.