He had expected to come upon the vision of his wife wheeling Mrs. Hilmer up and down the sidewalk, and yet, when these expectations were realized, he experienced a shock.  There she was, Helen Starratt, in a black dress and a black hat, pacing with drab patience the full length of the block and back again.  He could not get a good view of her face because her hat shaded her eyes.  Mrs. Hilmer’s figure, equally indistinct, was a shapeless mass of humanity.  A child, coming out of a nearby house with a pair of roller skates in her hand, stood off and answered his questions, at first reluctantly, but finally with the importance of encouraged childhood...  Who was the lady in the wheeled chair?  Mrs. Hilmer.  And the other one in black?  Her name was Starratt.  No, she didn’t know her very well.  But people said she was very sad.  She dressed in black and looked unhappy.  Why?  Because her husband was dead.  No, there was no mistake—­she had heard her mother say so many times—­Mrs. Starratt’s husband was dead, quite dead!...

He turned back toward town. Dead, quite dead!  Well, the child had reckoned better than she knew!

He retraced his steps slowly, resting upon many hospitable doorsteps that afternoon.  The noise of the city confused him, the stone pavements hurt his ankles, he was hungry and faint.  He did not know what to do or where to go.  Only one shelter lay open to him.  Should he go back to Storch?

Finally, toward five o’clock, he found himself standing upon the corner of California and Montgomery streets, watching the tide of office workers flooding homeward.  A truant animation was flaming them briefly.  Familiar face after familiar face passed, lighted with the joy of sudden release from servitude.  Fred Starratt was curiously unmoved.  He had fancied that he would feel a great yearning toward all this well-ordered sanity.  He had fancied that he would be overwhelmed with memories, with regrets, with futile tears.  But he knew now that even if it were possible to re-enter the world in which he had once moved he would refuse scornfully.  Was it always so with those who achieved death?  Ah yes, death was the great progression, one never re-entered the circle of life one quitted.  Dead, quite dead!  Or, as Storch put it, “A field freshly broken to the plow!” A field awaiting the eternal upspringing and the inevitable harvest...  And so on, again and again, to the end of time!

He came out of his musings with a renewed sense of faintness and the realization that the street was rapidly being emptied of its throng.  A few stragglers hurried toward the ferry.  He roused himself.  A green-gold light was enlivening the west and giving a ghostly unreality to the street lamps twinkling in a premature blossoming.

He was turning to go when he saw a familiar figure coming up the street.  He looked twice to assure himself that he was not mistaken.  It was Brauer!

He stood a moment longer, roused to indifferent curiosity, but, as Brauer brushed close, a sudden malevolent hatred shook him.  He squared himself and said in a hoarse tone: