It was as if she had never known before that Mark was dead and knew it now. She cried for the first time since his death, not because he was dead, but because he had died like that—playing.
He should have died fighting. Why couldn't he? There was the Boer War and the Khyber Pass and Chitral and the Soudan. He had missed them all. He had never had what he had wanted.
And Mamma who had cried so much had left off crying.
"The poor man couldn't have liked writing that letter, Mary. You needn't be angry with him."
"I'm not angry with him. I'm angry because Mark died like that."
"Heigh-h—" The sound in her mother's throat was like a sigh and a sob and a laugh jerking out contempt.
"You don't know what you're talking about. He's gone, Mary. If you were his mother it wouldn't matter to you how he died so long as he didn't suffer. So long as he didn't die of cholera."
"If he could have got what he wanted—"
"What's that you say?"
"If he could have got what he wanted."