It was so easy to be dead. Death had come to all who had been, even to more dignified and celebrated ones than they. Alas, death. The sober men and women in the Gilchrist home drifted about nervously. They must weep because for the moment they lay in the coffin with Mr. Gilchrist and because for the moment they walked sadly about mourning visions of their own deaths. And for the moment their tears earned for themselves the regard of their fellow mourners as kind-hearted, sensitive, unselfish souls. Yet there was something intimate among the company. Despite the embarrassment, a curious spirit of friendliness underlay the scene. Men and women who knew each other only as aloof symbols of prestige, stood together and talked in whispers as if they were talking out of character. Half strangers felt a familiarity toward each other. Under the stamp of a common emotion and a common embarrassment, the company became for the time a collection of intimates, looking at one another and whispering among themselves as if the event were a truce. This was a funeral. Here was reality. And it was polite to lay aside for an hour the masks, the complexities of artifice by which they baffled and impressed each other. The Reverend Henry Peyton had arrived and the mourners moved into the spacious library, grateful for a destination. The widow in black with her son and daughter-in-law appeared. The company surveyed them with a thrill of vicarious grief. Poor Mrs. Gilchrist, so strong and competent! It seemed almost impossible that she should lose anything, even something as mortal as a husband. She was so fixed and determined. Even now there was something sternly competent about her grief. It was hidden under a black veil. There was nothing to be seen of it but a black veil and a black dress and a pair of wrinkled little hands fumbling with themselves. Poor Mrs. Gilchrist. People had forgotten she was a woman. They felt slightly ashamed as they glanced at her now, as if they were intruding upon a secret. But she had invited them. A suppressed "Ah!" of sympathy murmured through the room. The minister's words began and a determined hush followed. Basine sitting in a corner of the room with his mother had spent an uncomfortable hour waiting for the services. He had looked at the body and come away depressed. His quick eyes had observed the company and noted with a concealed smile the manner in which lesser dignitaries were making hay while the tears poured. They were utilizing the camaraderie of prestige and the intimacy of a common emotion to impress themselves upon the greater dignitaries. Women of dubious social standing gravitated as if by general accident toward women of solid social standing and exchanged whispered condolences with them. Men of lesser financial ratings were edging toward leaders of finance and engaging them in dolorous conversations.