The long barbarism of burial was at an end. As they drove away, Eugene peered back through the little glass in the carriage. The two grave-diggers were already returning to their work. He watched until the first shovel of dirt had been thrown into the grave. He saw the raw new graves, the sere long grasses, noted how quickly the mourning wreaths had wilted. Then he looked at the wet gray sky. He hoped it would not rain that night.
It was over. The carriages split away from the procession. The men dropped off in the town at the newspaper office, the pharmacy, the cigar-store. The women went home. No more. No more.
Night came, the bare swept streets, the gaunt winds. Helen lay before a fire in Hugh Barton’s home. She had a bottle of chloroform liniment in her hand. She brooded morbidly into the fire, reliving the death a hundred times, weeping bitterly and becoming calm again.
“When I think of it, I hate her. I shall never forget. And did you hear her? Did you? Already she’s begun to pretend how much he loved her. But you can’t fool me! I know! He wouldn’t have her around. You saw that, didn’t you? He kept calling for me. I was the only one he’d let come near him. You know that, don’t you?”
“You’re the one who always has to be the goat,” said Hugh Barton sourly. “I’m getting tired of it. That’s what has worn you out. If they don’t leave you alone, I’m going to take you away from here.”
Then he went back to his charts and pamphlets, frowning importantly over a cigar, and scrawling figures on an old envelope with a stub of pencil gripped between his fingers.
She has him trained, too, Eugene thought.
Then, hearing the sharp whine of the wind, she wept again.
“Poor old Ben,” she said. “I can’t bear to think of him out there to-night.”
She was silent for a moment, staring at the fire.
“After this, I’m through,” she said. “They can get along for themselves.
