She brought forward her knowledge of the old man’s life, trying to make it stand as a picture before her. As a young man he had taught for a time in some college. His journals had come from far cities and he would read all night. He had been richly alive then, sensitive, secret with life, his nakedness covered, his bow gallant, his compliments ready. He had been a gay story-teller, and his friends had loved him. They had come miles to visit him, to sit all night over the fire. Then he had married Alice, a strange woman who liked to sit apart. When all the subtractions were made the naked man was left, new-born, uncovered. There should be a soul there somewhere, she thought, and she searched into the withered leavings of crippled body and quavering voice. When she had found this entity in her grandfather she would, she thought, be able to identify it within herself. Her emotion for him pooled largely within her and brought her to tears, and she gazed down into the red coals of her fire with a blurred vision. Gratitude and anxiety mingled in her weeping, and when she thought of the burnt letters her tears were renewed. Then she drew a blanket about her shoulders and went softly down the stairs to her grandfather’s door and listened to his noisy breathing with a sob of thankfulness that he still lived. She went within and passed beyond the glow of the night-light Siver had placed on the table near the bed. There was a mouldy smell of age putrefaction, close air, burning oil from the lamp. The fire had been covered with ashes, but it smouldered and gave a jerky flame. The air near the bed was heavy with the sour odor. The man lay stretched at length, sinking flatly into the bed, scarcely raising the quilts from their level. He had spread a silk handkerchief over his forehead to protect it from the cold, and she saw with a moment of shame that the handkerchief was streaked with stains where he had worn it about his throat. A week before she had bathed his face and shoulders, somewhat loathingly, but three days later she had bathed his entire body. She had grown in the interval. The days since had towered above her and she had reached to accompany each one to its highest pinnacle.