"I—I’ve never looked on death," he quavered. Alexandra, shocked beyond words, thought that Chalfont would surely strike him. He stood over him so long in a tense attitude. "My God!" he at last exclaimed. "Can this be a man?" He went to the door by which Lambert had entered, opened it, and then drew aside as far as he could to let the actor pass. XXV The London newspapers had not given much of their space to Mrs. Lambert’s doings while she was alive. She did not advertise in them. Besides, all their dramatic critics were on speaking terms with Lambert, and even dramatic critics have second-hand prejudices. But now that Mrs. Lambert was dead she was accorded the half-column of obituary notice to which actors and actresses seem to have a prescriptive right. Defunct millionaires and jam-makers get a little less: British officers who die for their country have to be satisfied with a couple of lines tucked away among the Military Intelligence. The papers belauded the dead woman. They recorded her dramatic successes with much detail. They were fulsome concerning her virtues. Their readers were left to imagine the feelings of her bereaved and heart-broken husband, who at the moment was sorting an auction-bridge hand in the cardroom of a transatlantic liner. It was the sort of pretentious gush that had always sickened Mrs. Lambert when she read it about others. The funeral was largely attended by members of the theatrical profession. Few of them knew the deceased personally, but as the occasion provided an opportunity for public exhibition and incidentally for getting their names into the papers they did not miss it. Maggy was not of these. Woolf had made some engagement for her which he would not let her break. But she sent a wreath. It was quite unlike any of the others. Hers was composed of autumn-tinted leaves and the last homely flowers that one sees in cottage gardens. She purposely wished to avoid the conventional effect aimed at by the professional florist whose stiff made-to-order wreath implies such indifference to death. Alexandra placed it at the head of the coffin. Mary Mantel had also sent one, ordered before she left for America with Lambert. But Alexandra refused to take it in. Lambert’s card was inscribed "From your sorrowing husband." All the newspapers dragged in those words with a suitably unctuous comment.