It was lonely. The station house was a little deserted brick building of only one room. Alice walked along the dusty road between the wet bright fields. It was going to rain. The sky was clotted with cloud. Through the vapors the illumined shadows of the sun's rays were outspread, fan-shaped, like shadowy fingers of fire. By itself, close to the road, was a whitewashed wooden church, and a bush with pagan-red leaves burnt up against it in beauty and derision. Alice felt, all at once, that she could go no further. She took out the pistol. She looked all about her. She was suddenly ashamed. Feeling as though she were playing a dangerous game, she held the pistol to her breast. She wanted the pistol to go off but she was afraid to pull the trigger. She tried the cold ring of metal against her temple. She felt herself ridiculous. Vainly she attempted to recall Winnie in the coffin, horrible and gone forever. She sat down limply on a grass bank by the roadside. The gray, motionless foliage of the trees grew thick and cumulus against the rainy sky. In her lax hand she held the pistol, stupid pistol which could no longer convince her of its purpose. It lay inertly on her palm that rested among the long gray grasses brushed flat to the earth with their dull crystal weight of dew. Death. She kept repeating the bright word to herself. She was dead. She could not believe in death. She stood up and shook her skirts and put the pistol in the bag. She felt stupid and sick. Her boots were all over dust and burrs clung to her petticoats. She hardly saw what was around her. She had never felt such heaviness in her life. She walked back and sat down in the dirty little waiting-room until a train should come. Already she fretted against herself. She did not believe in death. She could not hurt herself enough. She felt herself grow mean and hard and withered in her unbelief. She went back. PART V Laurence felt cleaner and happier in his attitude toward Winnie than he had ever been able to feel when she was alive. He did not go to the cemetery very often, but he saw to it that there were flowers planted in the plot, and that the place was well cared for. He was cold and still inside himself. His soul had been turned to iron. And he weighed carefully in the scales of justice what had been done by her and what by him. He refused to pity her or himself. But this could not last. His justice began to live and to ache with the pain of its own decisions. Then he threw it all away. It was only when he allowed himself to despise Winnie thoroughly that he could love her. He would not be killed with remorse. His children were his greatest pain. He was so close to Bobby that his pride in the child was only a hurt. Laurence was harsh with the child, and before strangers did nothing but find fault.