He had departed although he continued some manner of life. He never again called Theodosia by any name but Amelia. She fed him broth from a spoon and thus nourished his continuation while he had already gone into some memory, perpetually keeping there now. “He’s gone, he’s gone,” she said in her thought, “and I join hands with him,” and as she tuned some child’s instrument or busied herself with the lessons she leaped forward to try to experience entire dissolution, to consummate it for him, to foretell the encounter already well begun, stayed from any outcry by the enveloping confusion and distrust without and within. His regard for Amelia was constant, tender, dispassionate, and a curiosity to know who this person could have been troubled her and set her to search among all the names she had ever heard spoken in the house. Or she asked her father. “Who was Amelia in Grandfather’s life? When did Grandfather know Amelia?” “Amelia? Search me. You can’t never tell about the old war horse. Lived a long time, he did, and he lived well. What’s one skirt more to the old war horse? But she was a lady nohow. You can set that much down for certain. The old war horse, his taste ran to ladies. No white trash in his loven days. Amelia was a lady.” Horace spoke with tenderness now. “And who was Sylvester then?” “No tellen. Some nigger, I reckon. I wouldn’t say.” * * * * * “You can’t tell. A man lives a long time. Goes through a heap from first to last.” They sat in the dining-room waiting; there were many hours of waiting now. Horace talked incessantly, as if the summary of a life being enacted on the bed in the front room loosed his tongue and brought his own experience to a period, to a momentary full-stop. Or he talked of the old man and he was touched often with grief. Theodosia sat half-drowsed now, for she had slept but little of late. The words came as a continued recitative as Horace talked. “The old man was a good soldier. Nobody could say any dirt of the old man. Proud of his lineage and rightly so. He loved the fine things of the mind, you might say, and pursued classical learnen. Faithful to his ideal, honest with all men, proud, gentle, tender as a woman. Why, Father was a traveler far and wide. In his youth he spent several years in travel—and a right smart of money too, I reckon. Few men of his generation were more widely read, more richly informed. I know what I say. In his youth he was an omnivorous reader, optimistic, salubrious, and among his colleagues there was none better fitted to lead and counsel the young. Faithful to his highest conceptions, an inspiration to the youth of his circle, he was intelligent, honest, proud, and as tender as a woman.”