Kitty shook her head and slowly smiled. "I'm not.
I have hope and courage."
The past was finished; let the dead bury their dead.
Was that dreadfully callous?
She hoped with all her heart that she had learnt compassion and charity.
She could not know what the future had in store for her, but she felt in herself the strength to accept whatever was to come with a light and buoyant spirit.
Then, on a sudden, for no reason that she knew of, from the depths of her unconscious arose a reminiscence of the journey they had taken, she and poor Walter, to the plaque-ridden city where he had met his death: one morning they set out in their chairs while it was still dark, and as the day broke she divined rather than saw a scene of such breathtaking loveliness that for a brief period the anguish of her heart was assuaged.
It reduced to insignificance all human tribulation.
The sun rose, dispelling the mist, and she saw winding onwards as far as the eye could reach, among the rice-fields, across a little river and through undulating country the path they were to follow: perhaps her faults and follies, the unhappiness she had suffered, were not entirely vain if she could follow the path that now she dimly discerned before her, not the path that kind funny old Waddington had spoken of that led nowhither, but the path those dear nuns at the convent followed so humbly, the path that led to peace.