In the room with the lawyer sat a woman. She was a nurse, in charge of the children of his second wife, a magnificent blonde creature with white teeth. They sat beside a table, spread with books and magazines. The woman who sat with the lawyer in the room with the dead man, was, like himself, flush with life. He remembered, with a start, that she had been introduced into the house by the boy who was dead. He began to couple them in his mind and talked about it. “You were in love with him, eh?” he asked presently. The woman said nothing. She sat under a lamp with her legs crossed. The lamplight fell upon her shapely shoulders. The lawyer, getting out of his chair, walked up and down the room. He thought of his wife, the woman he loved, asleep upstairs, and of the price they had paid for their devotion to each other. “It is barbarous, this old custom of sitting up with the dead,” he said, and, going to another part of the house, returned with a bottle of wine and two glasses. With the wine before them the lawyer and the woman sat looking at each other. They stared boldly into each other’s eyes, each concerned with his own thoughts. A clock ticked loudly and the woman moved uneasily. By an open window the wind stirred a white curtain and tossed it back and forth above the coffin, black and ominous. He began thinking of the years of hard, unremittent labor and of the pleasures he had missed. Before his eyes danced visions of white-clad dinner tables, with men and bare-shouldered women sitting about. Again he walked up and down the room. Upon the table lay a magazine, devoted to farm life, and upon the cover was a scene in a barn yard. A groom was leading a magnificent stallion out at the door of a red barn. Pointing his finger at the picture, the lawyer began to talk. A new quality came into his voice. His hand played nervously up and down the table. There was a gentle swishing sound of the blown curtain across the top of the coffin. “I saw one once when I was a boy,” he said, pointing with his finger at the stallion. He approached and stood over her. “It was a wonderful sight,” he said, looking down at her. “I have never forgotten it. The great animal was all life, vibrant, magnificent life. Its feet scarcely touched the ground.” “We are like that,” he added, leaning over her. “The men of our family have that vibrant, conquering life in us.” The woman arose from the chair and moved toward the darkened corner where the coffin stood. He followed slowly. When they had gone thus across the room she put up her hand and plead with him. “No, no!—Think! Remember!” she whispered. With a low laugh he sprang at her. She dodged quickly. Both of them had become silent. Among the chairs and tables they went, swiftly, silently, the pursuer and the pursued.