He kept his eye on Gideon after dinner, diplomatically preventing several attempts on the part of that comforter to reascend the stairs; and it was a relief to Bibbs when George announced that an automobile was waiting to convey the ancient man and his grandson to their train.  They were the last to leave, and when they had gone Bibbs went sighing to his own room.

He stretched himself wearily upon the bed, but presently rose, went to the window, and looked for a long time at the darkened house where Mary Vertrees lived.  Then he opened his trunk, took therefrom a small note-book half filled with fragmentary scribblings, and began to write: 

Laughter after a funeral.  In this reaction people will laugh at anything and at nothing.  The band plays a dirge on the way to the cemetery, but when it turns back, and the mourning carriages are out of hearing, it strikes up, “Darktown is Out To-night.”  That is natural—­but there are women whose laughter is like the whirring of whips.  Why is it that certain kinds of laughter seem to spoil something hidden away from the laughers?  If they do not know of it, and have never seen it, how can their laughter hurt it?  Yet it does.  Beauty is not out of place among grave-stones.  It is not out of place anywhere.  But a woman who has been betrothed to a man would not look beautiful at his funeral.  A woman might look beautiful, though, at the funeral of a man whom she had known and liked.  And in that case, too, she would probably not want to talk if she drove home from the cemetery with his brother:  nor would she want the brother to talk.  Silence is usually either stupid or timid.  But for a man who stammers if he tries to talk fast, and drawls so slowly, when he doesn’t stammer, that nobody has time to listen to him, silence is advisable.  Nevertheless, too much silence is open to suspicion.  It may be reticence, or it may be a vacuum.  It may be dignity, or it may be false teeth.

Sometimes an imperceptible odor will become perceptible in a small inclosure, such as a closed carriage.  The ghost of gasoline rising from a lady’s glove might be sweeter to the man riding beside her than all the scents of Arcady in spring.  It depends on the lady—­ but there are!  Three miles may be three hundred miles, or it may be three feet.  When it is three feet you have not time to say a great deal before you reach the end of it.  Still, it may be that one should begin to speak.

No one could help wishing to stay in a world that holds some of the people that are in this world.  There are some so wonderful you do not understand how the dead could die.  How could they let themselves?  A falling building does not care who falls with it.  It does not choose who shall be upon its roof and who shall not.  Silence can be golden?  Yes.  But perhaps if a woman of the world should find herself by accident sitting beside a man for the