After this there was a list of contributions for the monument, beginning with one thousand dollars, which had been subscribed by an anonymous stranger from the North. Yes, dreadful as it was, she couldn't get over the feeling that there was something unreal and theatrical in the event. She might have been on the stage at a school festival, listening to all these people declaiming selections from Shakespeare. Nathan's heroism sounded to her as unnatural as the way things happened in Shakespeare. She felt ashamed of herself. Had she failed Nathan in his death because she could not recognize him in what she thought of vaguely as his heroic part? Well, ashamed or not, she simply could not take it in. If you could once take it in, she said to herself stupidly, the whole of life would be different; yet, for the moment, she was too stunned, too confused, to credit the incredible. The tragedy appeared too magnificent to be true. The minister was an old man. He had known Dorinda's mother when they were both young; he had known Nathan when he was a child; and he wheezed now with distress when he talked of him. His face was as grey and inflexible as a rock, Dorinda thought, though his voice reminded her of a purling brook. Over his bulging forehead his limp white hair hung in loose strands which curled at the ends. She had not seen him for years outside the pulpit, and it embarrassed her that he should stand on a level with her and wipe his eyes on the shreds of a silk handkerchief. While he rambled on, she looked beyond him and saw all those persons, some of whom were unknown to her, moving about the parlour, which was as sacred to her as a tombstone. They were whispering, too, among themselves, and she knew that they were speaking of Nathan in the sanctimonious tone which they had consecrated to missionaries who had died at their posts or to distinguished generals of the Confederacy. She observed John Abner go out to help put up the horses, and glancing out of the window, she saw Fluvanna coming from the henhouse with a bunch of fowls in her hands. With her usual foresight, the girl, who had kept her head better than the other negroes, was preparing supper for the multitude.