Instinctively I separated myself from them. It was neither bad news nor good news to me, but it recalled to me certain hours, and they—it was as if they enjoyed the importance of bereavement. Anita talked. Miss Howe was gulping, and dabbing at her eyes. The Baxter girl kept on saying—‘Dead?’ ‘Dead?’ under her breath, and with that wide nervous smile that you sometimes see on people’s faces when they are far enough away from laughter. Great-aunt had shrunk into her corner. I could barely see her. The blonde lady had her hand on her heart and was panting a little, as if she had been running, and yet, as always, she watched Mr. Flood. He had pulled out a note-book and a fountain-pen and was shaking at it furiously, while his little eyes flickered from one to another—even to me. I felt his observance pursue me to the very edge of the ring of light, and drop again, baulked by the dazzle, as I slipped past him into the swinging shadows beyond. It’s odd how lamp-light cuts a room in two: I could see every corner of the light and shadow alike, and even the outer room was not too dim for me to move about it easily; but to those directly under the lamp I knew I had become all but invisible, a blur among the other blurs that were curtains and pictures and chairs. They remembered me as little as, absorbed and clamorous, they remembered the man who had brought them their news, and then had brushed his way through question and comment to the deep alcove of the window in the outer room and there stood, rigid and withdrawn, staring out through the uncurtained pane at the solid night beyond. I could not see his face, only the outline of a big and clumsy body, and a hand that twitched and fumbled at the tassel of the blind. And all the while Anita, white as paper, was talking, talking, talking, saying how great the shock was, and how much Miss Grey had been to her—a stream of sorrow and self-assertion. It was just as if she said—‘Don’t forget that this is far worse for me than for any of you. Don’t forget——’ But the others went on with their own thoughts. “Dead? Gone? It’s not possible.” Miss Howe was all blubbered and deplorable. “What shall we do without her?” “Yes—that’s it!” The Baxter girl edged-in her chair to her like a young dog asking for comfort. “For that matter, from the point of view of literature,” Anita’s voice grated, “she died a year ago.” “It’s not possible! That’s what I say—it’s not possible!” It was strange how even the Baxter girl ignored Anita. “Dead! I can’t grasp it. It’s—it’s too awful. She was so vivid.” “Awful?” Mr. Flood was biting his fingers. “Awful? Nothing of the kind. You know that Holbein cut—no, it’s earlier stuff—‘Death and the Lady,’ crude, preposterous. And _that’s_ what it is. Old Bones and Madala Grey? That’s not tragedy, that’s farce! Farce, dear people, farce!” Then his high tripping voice broke suddenly. “Dead? Why, she wasn’t thirty!”