Howards End

by E.M. Forster

she felt that something unique had fallen out of her life. Their grief, though less poignant than their father's, grew from deeper roots, for a wife may be replaced; a mother never.

It is thus, if there is any rule, that we ought to die—neither as victim nor as fanatic, but as the seafarer who can greet with an equal eye the deep that he is entering, and the shore that he must leave.

Just as some people cease to attend when books are mentioned, so Tibby's attention wandered when "personal relations" came under discussion.