“I drew back the curtains on a day of sunny loveliness and perfect peace,” she wrote. “The apple-trees in the garden were pink-dotted against the luscious, thick-piled whiteness of the pear-blossom; the sky was warmly blue, birds were chirruping in the trees, and there was a gentle Sunday-morning quietness over everything. Impossible to believe that last night, from this same window, everything should have been savagely red with fire-glow and smoke, and deafening with an inferno of noise.”
