A Woman's War by Warwick Deeping

Betty Steel sat alone at the open window of her room one evening as the sun went down over the red roofs of the old town. Lying back in her chair, with her head on a cushion of yellow silk, she could see nothing of the life in the square below, but only the tops of the elm-trees, the black spire of the church, and an infinite expanse of cloud-barred sky. The west stood one great splendor of scarlet and of gold. Above, at the zenith, the clouds were bathed in a radiance of auriferous rose. A cold chalcedony blue held the eastern arch, where the purple rim of the night merged into the amethystine shadows of the woodland hills.

Betty Steel was alone, save for the cat Mignon, curled up asleep in her mistress's lap. Half covering the cat was a crumpled letter, a letter that had been read and reread by eyes that were blind to the pageant of the summer sky. She stirred now and again in her chair, and shivered. The evening seemed cold to her despite all this chaos of color, this kindling of the torches of the west. The house, too, had an empty silence, like a lonely house where death had been and set a seal upon its lips.