With little or no power of initiative, she would do what she was set to do with a thoroughness that would shame an initiator; temperamentally unable to beg anything of anybody, she required love as a plant requires water; she could give herself completely, yet remain oddly incorruptible; in a word, hopeless, and usually beloved of those who thought her so.
With all this, however, she was not quite what is called a 'sweet woman--a phrase she detested--for there was in her a queer vein of gentle cynicism.

She 'saw' with extraordinary clearness, as if she had been born in Italy and still carried that clear dry atmosphere about her soul.

She loved glow and warmth and colour; such mysticism as she felt was pagan; and she had few aspirations--sufficient to her were things as they showed themselves to be.
This morning, when she had made herself smell of geraniums, and fastened all the small contrivances that hold even the best of women together, she went downstairs to her little dining-room, set the spirit lamp going, and taking up her newspaper, stood waiting to make tea.
It was the hour of the day most dear to her.

If the dew had been brushed off her life, it was still out there every morning on the face of Nature, and on the faces of her flowers; there was before her all the pleasure of seeing how each of those little creatures in the garden had slept; how many children had been born since the Dawn; who was ailing, and needed attention.

There was also the feeling, which renews itself every morning in people who live lonely lives, that they are not lonely, until, the day wearing on, assures them of the fact.