It was late in the afternoon when the end came to his father, quietly, and with no pain. His father knew him, smiled at him, and with perfect gentleness and without shyness, put out his hand. Save in a handshake, he had never taken his hand before since he was a little boy. But now they took each other’s hands naturally, as if a veil had gone. Afterward, the Inger wondered why he had not kissed him. He had not thought of that. Before he called any one, the Inger stood still, looking at his father, and looking out the window to the City. So much had happened. A great deal of what had happened he understood, but there was much more that seemed to be pressing on him to be made clear. He had a strong sense of being some one else, of standing outside and watching. What great change was this that had come to his father and to him? By dark they had taken his father away. The Inger went with him and did what he could. His father lay in an undertaker’s chapel. From the street the Inger stared at the chapel. It looked so strangely like the other buildings. He took back to his room some poor belongings of his father’s, and when he saw the little room, and the empty unmade bed, he was shaken by a draining sense of loneliness—the first loneliness that he had ever known. Then he let his thought go where all day it had longed to go. He wanted Lory Moor. He let himself go round by the little house of the Folts’s. It was quite dark, save for that watching light in the kitchen window. He waited on the other side of the street for a long time. No one came. There seemed to be no one in the neighborhood. A little dog came by, looked up at him, and stood wagging a ragged tail. The Inger stooped, then squatted beside the dog, and patted his head. “I must get a dog,” he thought. “I’d ought to have a dog.” At last he went away, down toward the town. And as he went, darkness seemed to close in and press about him. His hands were empty. His life was something other than that which he had believed it to be. Where was all this that he had had.... IX AS he turned into a wider street, he became aware that he was following with many who went one way. He kept on with them, intent on nothing. On Pennsylvania Avenue the crowd was going east, and he went east. But of all this he thought little, until he came near the Capitol. There the people swung both east and west, and rounded the building. So he came out in the Square before the east entrance. The Square was filled with women. There were some men, too, but women were dominant in the throng. He remembered the meeting to which the papers had vaguely referred and because he had nothing to do, he moved on with the rest to the doors. He noted that the women were saying little. It was almost a silent throng, as if all were immeasurably absorbed in something. Oddly, he thought of Mrs. Folts, and her absorption in food for her family and her guests.