The workmen placed the flowers and wreaths upon the mound and about it, and Bibbs altered the position of one or two of these, then stood looking thoughtfully at the grotesque brilliancy of that festal-seeming hillock beneath the darkening November sky.  “It’s too bad!” he half whispered, his lips forming the words—­and his meaning was that it was too bad that the strong brother had been the one to go.  For this was his last thought before he walked to the coupe and saw Mary Vertrees standing, all alone, on the other side of the drive.

She had just emerged from a grove of leafless trees that grew on a slope where the tombs were many; and behind her rose a multitude of the barbaric and classic shapes we so strangely strew about our graveyards:  urn-crowned columns and stone-draped obelisks, shop-carved angels and shop-carved children poising on pillars and shafts, all lifting—­in unthought pathos—­their blind stoniness toward the sky.  Against such a background, Bibbs was not incongruous, with his figure, in black, so long and slender, and his face so long and thin and white; nor was the undertaker’s coupe out of keeping, with the shabby driver dozing on the box and the shaggy horses standing patiently in attitudes without hope and without regret.  But for Mary Vertrees, here was a grotesque setting—­she was a vivid, living creature of a beautiful world.  And a graveyard is not the place for people to look charming.

She also looked startled and confused, but not more startled and confused than Bibbs.  In “Edith’s” poem he had declared his intention of hiding his heart “among the stars”; and in his boyhood one day he had successfully hidden his body in the coal-pile.  He had been no comrade of other boys or of girls, and his acquaintances of a recent period were only a few fellow-invalids and the nurses at the Hood Sanitarium.  All his life Bibbs had kept himself to himself—­he was but a shy onlooker in the world.  Nevertheless, the startled gaze he bent upon the unexpected lady before him had causes other than his shyness and her unexpectedness.  For Mary Vertrees had been a shining figure in the little world of late given to the view of this humble and elusive outsider, and spectators sometimes find their hearts beating faster than those of the actors in the spectacle.  Thus with Bibbs now.  He started and stared; he lifted his hat with incredible awkwardness, his fingers fumbling at his forehead before they found the brim.

“Mr. Sheridan,” said Mary, “I’m afraid you’ll have to take me home with you.  I—­” She stopped, not lacking a momentary awkwardness of her own.

“Why—­why—­yes,” Bibbs stammered.  “I’ll—­I’ll be de—­Won’t you get in?”

In that manner and in that place they exchanged their first words.  Then Mary without more ado got into the coupe, and Bibbs followed, closing the door.

“You’re very kind,” she said, somewhat breathlessly.  “I should have had to walk, and it’s beginning to get dark.  It’s three miles, I think.”