He was only slightly conscious of the people that came in to see how she was and of his father sitting speechless in the corner, and Dorah busy with one thing and another. He resented the appearance of the doctor and his cursory examination of her, the negative shaking of his head towards Reb Monash. What was there still to be done! What need was there to underline so black, so ineluctable a fact? Perhaps if he had more frequently envisaged the possibility of her death formerly, even in the face of her lying so wasted on the bed before him he might have dared to entertain a wild flicker of hope. But having only in dreams seen her dead hitherto, and then with such indignation and terror even in the depths of his subconscious heart that he would awake fighting the dark, now the pulse of his soul was smothered in an icy certitude, and he would allow no forlorn gleam of hope to lead him away from her, from this last intense communion of which the sands were running out, moment by ashen moment. There was a murmuring like wings about their heads and about them the shuffling of clumsy feet attempting to achieve a vain silence. Sometimes he would find Reb Monash hanging over them, or Channah and Dorah whispering together. One of them might smooth a pillow or lift a spoon to her lips. And though he knew that these things were happening within the same four walls as contained his mother and himself, in the limitless egotism of his grief it seemed to him that walls far other than these held them in a remote world, together, inseparable, undisturbed. Imperceptibly day had thickened into dusk and dusk into night. The incandescent mantle chuckled and flared unevenly. The last neighbour had tearfully withdrawn. He knew that several times Dorah had spoken to him and that he had answered, yet with no knowledge of the words his lips were actually shaping. At last he realized that both his sisters were urging him to go away, to go to bed. Channah was trying to draw him from the chair where he sat leaning over the bed. "No, no, I'm not going!" he said. "But you must go! Channah and I..." started Dorah. "Go!" said Channah, "only for a few hours!" "I tell you I've been away all these days and I'm not going away for a second now! Let me be quiet, both of you! You go to bed! Can't I see you've been up every night, while I've been sleeping in comfort over there, not knowing anything!" He dropped his voice to a tone of appeal. "_Do_ let me stay! If she wants anything, I can manage it. Dorah, you ought to go up to be near father!" He found himself dimly conscious for the first time since his return of his father's pallor, his ghost-like silence. The vague picture of his father faded away.