"Later, as I stood there outside the door, stunned by what had happened, back through the doorway came running a boy. Clive, if you have forgotten what you said to that child there by the darkened doorway of life, the girl who writes this has never forgotten.
"And now, since sorrow has come to you, in my turn I seek you where you stand by a darkened door alone, and I send to you my very soul in this poor, inky letter,—all I can offer—Clive—all that I believe—all that I am.
"Athalie."
So much for tribute and condolence as far as she could be concerned where she remained among the other millions outside the sacred threshold across which her letter and her flowers had gone, across which the girl herself might never go.
After a few days he wrote and thanked her for her letter, not of course knowing about the lilies:
"It is the first time death has ever come very near me. I had been told and had always thought that we were a long-lived race.
"I am still dazed by it. I suppose the sharper grief will come when this dull, unreal sense of stupefaction wears away.
"We were very close together, my father and I. Oh, but we might have been closer, Athalie!—I might have been with him oftener, seen more of him, spent less time away from him.
"I did try to be a good son. I could have been far better. It's a bitter thing to realise at such a time.