“Lockwin was a pretty fair-sized man, like you.  I guess you remind me of him a trifle.  They was a fine pair.  I never was stuck on him, for I was in politics against him; but somehow or other I’ve hearn the dame praise him so much, and he die in the yawl, and so on, until I feel like a brother to him.  Just cut across with me,” as they leave the car.  “Want a seat with the reporters?  Oh, that will be all right out here.  Say you’re from the outside—­where is it?  Eau Claire?  Say Eau Claire.  Here is some copy paper.  Sit side of me.  Screw your nut out of my place, young feller,” to a mere sight-seer.  “Bet your life.  Don’t take that seat neither!  Go on, now!”

David Lockwin is to report the dedication of his own monument.  He trembles and grows thankful that Corkey has ceased to talk.  The audience gathers slowly.  David Lockwin wonders it he be a madman thus to expose himself.  A memorial hospital!  Did not Corkey speak of that?  The David Lockwin Annex!

This is awful!  Lockwin has not read a word of it.  Ay, but the apartments are still at Gramercy Square.  Why did he come?  What fate led him away?  What devil has lured him back?  Hold!  Hold!  There is Esther!  Lift her veil!  Give her air!  Esther, the beautiful!

The reporter for the Eau Claire paper groans with the people.  His heart falls to the bottom of the sea.  She loves him!  God bless her!  She loves him!  Why did he not believe it at home?  God bless her!  Is she not noble?

“She’s a great dame,” Corkey whispers loudly.  “Special friend of mine.  You bet your sweet life I’d do anything for her.  I’ll find that yawl, too!”

“The late honorable David Lockwin,” begins the pastor of the fashionable church.

“The late honorable David Lockwin,” write the reporters.

“The late honorable David Lockwin,” writes David Lockwin.

He grows ill and dizzy once more.  The exercises proceed.  He will fall if he do not look at Esther’s face.

“I know,” cries the shrill soprano, “that my—­Redeemer liveth.”

There comes upon the widow’s face an ecstatic look of hope.  She will meet her husband in heaven, and he will praise her love and fidelity.

“God bless her!” writes the Eau Claire reporter, and hastily scratches the sentence as he reads it.

A messenger approaches the reporters.  A note is passed along.

“I got to go!” whispers Corkey, “you can stay.  They sent for me at the office.  I guess something’s up.”

David Lockwin is only too glad to escape.  He dreads to leave Esther, yet what is Esther to him?  He will hurry away to New York before he falls into the abyss that opens before him.

“Do you suppose she loved her husband as much as it seems?” he asks.

“I wish she’d love me a quarter as much, though I’m a married man.  Love him!  Well, I should say!”

Corkey tries to be loquacious.  But his dark face grows darker.