Mary Christina
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Mary Christina was going to die. — For sixty years, come March, she had been an inhabitant of the earth, and had suffered her full share of life’s vicissitudes: she had passed from girl to woman, had loved and been loved, had borne children and tended children, had watched young faces lose their youth, and harden, and grow unbeautiful; she had cared for graves; had resigned herself, in the course of years, to the creeping on of age: she had wept, and laughed, and been indifferent, mostly indifferent, as is man’s way; but now she was going to cease to be, and nothing would please her, or sadden her, or leave her merely cold, again.
She knew what was coming, before anyone else; for she had had a presentiment: so, at least, she called it, one grey November afternoon
