The intimidating superiority was the body under the glass cover of the coffin. It would have been easier in a church. Funerals were much less of a strain in a church and there were several whispers to this effect. Why had Mrs. Gilchrist insisted upon a home funeral? Wasn't it rather old fashioned? Here in a house death seemed uncomfortably personal. The stage was too small and the mourners were too near something. A curious sympathy that had nothing to do with Mr. Gilchrist took possession of them. The damp, sweet odor of the flowers, the glimpse of the black coffin, the sound of softly moving feet and whispering tongues were a distressing ensemble. The mourners drifted around and nodded nervously at each other as if they were doing all they could to make the best of a faux pas. Death was a faux pas. A reality without adjectives. A stark, mannerless lie. The family had done its best also. Flowers had been heaped, furniture arranged, the body dressed, a luxurious coffin purchased, great people invited. Nevertheless the waxen-faced one under the glass cover refused to yield its reality. It lay stark and mannerless in the large room--the immemorial skeleton at the feast--repeating the dreadful word "death" with an almost humorous persistency amid the heaped flowers, the carved furniture, the mourners with raised eyebrows. They stood about nervously. Gilchrist had been a man alive, one of those whose names were known to the world. The name Gilchrist had meant a large building stored with rugs, period furniture, innumerable clerks, departments, delivery trucks, advertisements in newspapers and on fences. The man Gilchrist had been one with whom the dignitaries of the city had shared the intimacy of prestige. They had said Gilchrist's was a fine store, Gilchrist's was marvelous furniture, Gilchrist was a highly successful business man. Gilchrist was this and that and the other. And here lay Gilchrist, waxen and unscrupulously silent, under a glass cover--a little man with pale sideburns that were now doubly useless, in a black suit and his hands folded over his chest. Here lay Gilchrist dead, and yet the things that had been called Gilchrist still lived. As if immortality was an artifice, superior to life. The furniture store, the furniture, the clerks, trucks, advertisements, the highly successful business--all these still lived. And this was an uncomfortable fact. It embarrassed the mourners. They drifted about with uncertainty.