Her disquieting footfall followed him to the sitting-room. Her arm gestured past him. “They got it from undertaker Norton, in Bessemer,” she volunteered chattily under her breath. “Yes.” The dining-room door creaked to at last. He stood, rubbing the ball of his right thumb with his forefinger, as if to cleanse each of invisible irritating dust from the felt hat. The hat was gone; its absence was a momentary annoyance, a perceptible gap in things. There were two chairs. Both were against the same wall, toward the front of the house. The mantel, the chair with flowers, the two empty chairs, and ... it.... His restless mind took an unconscious inventory. Instinctively he put off thinking about what lay within it. He took the farther chair. They were almost a room’s length apart, and this one was slightly nearer what had been the man he had loved. She--the woman that he despised--could hardly think that his mere sitting there could poison the air for her. His mind wandered on. Honeysuckles were great flowers for funerals. That sharp, stiff odor--it was like the look of dahlias, stiff, waxy. There were some in old man Lunsford’s side yard. Maybe these came from there. He could afford to give away, especially if it cost him nothing: flowers ... advice.... Butting into people’s business, with his skinny little face and weedy little beard, like his own weedy front yard. The dining-room door creaked open. A firmer step thudded on the carpet. She came into the room, a thin hand shading her eyes, to make him out. Then she sat in the empty chair. “Evenin’, Louella.” It was her house, now; decency demanded that much. “Evenin’.” The word was spat out. She sat stiff on the chair-edge, white hands folded upon black skirt. Her eyes pointed straight down the room. She said no more; he kept still. The odor of the kerosene-lamp swayed with that of the honey-suckles, mingled with a soiled scent he at last imagined must come from the middle of the room. She had not meant to speak beyond this. But she should have made it civil. Maybe she had been a bit short. “Aunt Teby tol’ me yer were here.” His answer was framed after a pause. “Yes. I saw her.” There was nothing more to be said about it. Each nursed sullen dislike. The stolid minutes passed. Occasional remote noises entered, looked about, left swiftly. A pan banged from the rear of the house; a horse neighed listlessly; doors creaked open and shut with exaggerated quietness. These subsided. The stillness of death spread from the middle of the room to the house and the farm without.