Read "Doomsday" by Warwick Deeping online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
Afterwards a short season of serenity came to her, and she sat and looked calmly at the wreckage, and wondered at it and at herself. She was surprised at her own calmness. She discovered in herself a new and questioning attitude towards the immediate past, and since past, present, and future are all part of the same skein, this questioning mood of hers had the significance of life. Had she been happy? What was happiness? What were the things she had lost? Did she regret the loss of them?
That was one of her discoveries. She did not regret the wreckage, but the manner of the wrecking, her share in it, her participation, the human memory tangled up in it. Poor grandee! He had left her a letter, a pathetic letter, about the only articulate utterance she had had from him. A dead man's message, piteous, apologetic, gentle. "My nerve went. I could not handle things--or see them. A sort of blindness. Try and forgive me the mess--"