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Suddenly practical, she struck another light, and set a tallow dip on the table. He asked for water and she gave it to him, wiping his forehead with an old rag dipped in the bowl. After that she fetched her mother's gown from the next room, and rolled it up under his head for a pillow. He seemed to fall asleep, muttering and rambling on to himself; she put out the light and crept away into the bedroom, weeping—for the old gown had made her think of her mother.

§ 16

But on Sunday she no longer wept for her mother, because she knew that her mother would have looked at her out of slits of mocking eyes as she set out for meeting, to tell the Brethren the tale of her latest vision. Even so, her mother's shadow a little dimmed the glory of that tale, for the meeting was full of the commoner, homelier tale of the young wife's death in childbed, and of the little babe who had failed to pass through the Gate of the Brethren. Tongues that had been silenced by authority and necessity at the funeral and the funeral feast now twisted slowly round sacred, mysterious words, as the men and women stood up one by one and spoke of the beloved soul in heaven, gazing across the crystal sea into the lightnings of the Great White Throne, singing the song of Moses the Servant of God, and the song of the Lamb—no longer a poor labourer's wife, exhausted with hunger and childbirth, but a King and a Priest . . . "Thou hast made us unto our God kings and priests" . . . the words burned in Susan's ears, though all the time she seemed to see her mother gazing at the Great White Throne out of slits of mocking eyes.