His word had never been doubted:  this passed invention.  And he was thanked, not chidden for his narrative, and Reverend said: 

“He shall wear that suit for his burial....”

So the crows flitted out of the door again, their errand done; and behind them was a deeper stillness than they had found.

The old waiting-room, a little dark at best, grew dimmer.  Sunlight faded from the ruined floor.  The glorious afternoon was drawing in.  The men did not speak.  And then in the lengthening silence, there floated up small noises:  a door creaking open; quiet feet upon the stairs; a faint swishing as of a skirt.

The parson was standing by the half-open door.

“D’you think, sir,” he spoke suddenly aloud, “there’s any way to preach to a man, like just being better than he is?”

O’Neill roused, but made no answer.  He had been thinking of the day he had seen this fellow Garland dodging down the hall with those trousers there.  Then, becoming aware of the footsteps, he said: 

“Pond back ...  Is it?”

But Mr. Dayne, looking out down the corridor, said no.  After a pause, he added, in a yet lower voice: 

“It’s young Cooney, from the Works ...  And a lady.”

A change had gone over the parson’s kind face, making it still kinder.  His sense of surrounding desolation ebbed from him.  People acknowledged their heavy debt; paid as stoutly as they could.  On the stairs there he saw, coming, the daughter of the man whose negligence had taken to-day a young life not easily to be spared.

“They’re both friends of mine,” added Mr. Dayne, gently.  “Perhaps you will excuse me a moment?”

And he stepped out into the hall, shutting the door quietly behind him.

* * * * *

So Mr. Dayne thought.  But under the heavy veil she wore, this was less a daughter than a woman:  Cally, who had loved for a day and in the evening heard that her love was dead.

The thought behind the venture had been Chas’s.  Nothing required him at the House of Heth; he was for getting his sister and going to see what help the Dabney House might need.  And at the last minute, she had put on her hat again, and gone too.  Nothing that Mr. Dayne had felt about the loneliness of this end could touch what Cally had felt.  Of whom, too, was help more required than of her, now or never any more?  So they had driven three from Saltman’s to the old hotel, where she had thought to come to a meeting to-day.  And then Henrietta, who had come out from her typewriter strong and white as ice, methodically sticking in hatpins as she crossed the sidewalk; Hen, the iron-hearted, had quite suddenly broken down; laying her cold face in Cally’s lap, weeping wildly that she would not bear it....

So Cally must brave the stairs without her, must speak to who might be here.  But she did not mind.  Strength had come to her with the consciousness that had returned all too quickly:  the dead strength of the inanimate.  She was dark and cold within as the spaces between the worlds....