And always a whispering, and a secret sound of feet even so low under the water's rim, whither no sun attained, where the bell swung to and fro in the lapse of glooms. The fantastic denizens of these waters! Things with large phosphorescent eyes shedding tears that flickered down the watery darkness like worms of fire! Things with shuffling feet and lolling heads, bearded things with wise and cavernous skulls, and one, shaped like a small woman, appearing, disappearing, busy on important offices beyond all scrutiny! They would stand over him, staring with meaningless kindness through the weeds which swayed and swung over his body. They would endeavour to lift his hands from their laxity to receive the offerings they brought, would lift their offerings to his lips, but too bitter was the savour of brine on his tongue and his head too weary! He would turn away from them, burying his face in the clammy sands. There had long been a filtered light in the waters which engulfed the world; the light thickened into opaque walls. He could see no more the lolling heads, that busy strange woman who came and went. Only darkness, and for how long! Even the bell was muffled almost to nothingness, the bell was more a sense than a sound, the bell seemed to be tolling from the deeps of his own body where he lay unstarred, tolling from below his bones and making the arm which lay across his breast lift and fall away. Once more the light returning and the sound of feet and the bell louder tolling, louder and ever louder, until the metal against which the tongue beat and clamoured, burst into a thousand fragments, and he knew that he shook with sobs! Over him stood the busy woman; Mrs. Finberg she was, the shroud maker, officiator at deaths. She waited till the hollow sobbing subsided, then pressed on him hot cup of tea. This time he did not refuse, did not turn his head and bury it in the escaping stuffing of the sofa. After some moments he rose and opened the kitchen door. He found Channah proceeding towards the lobby. "When will it be, Channah?" he asked, "Is it arranged?" "When will what be?" "You know, the funeral, I mean!" "It won't be more than a few hours now!" "But I don't understand! Not more than a few hours! What's the time now?" "It's just after nine!" "Nine o'clock? But she died at nine o'clock!" She drew back frightened. "But that was _yesterday_!" "_Yesterday_? Oh, what's the matter with me? Is it Sunday just now then?" "Of course it is! It was _shabbos_ yesterday!" "Of course, of course!" He began to apprehend how time had been annihilated for him. "Of course it's Sunday! What was I talking about? And you say it's in a few hours then?" "The man from the burial society has just been in. He says the cabs'll come about two, he thinks; somebody said that funerals are the only things that Jews are in time about. Oh, Philip, Philip, they'll not be late; what does it matter when they come?"