“It means, Bliss, that she is passing from the world. She is slipping away from herself, as we do in our dotage, leaving only what we remember from the first – songs and rhymes, and what have you. But her mind is not gone, as a dotard’s is. It is elsewhere. She is passing from the world, but she has some business in it still. People talk of fearing ghosts, but it is not ghosts they should be afraid of. It is the likes of this poor creature.”
