“Maybe you said it. What did she wear?”

“Wear, ma’am?”

“Yes—wear. They didn’t bury her naked, did they?”

A struggle of effort crossed Helen’s face. “I don’t know,” she said at last. “I don’t remember.”

“Did you go to the cemetery?”

“No, ma’am. Nobody did—except him.”

“Who?”

“Her man.”

Kate said quickly—almost too quickly, “Have you got any regulars tonight?”

“No, ma’am. Day before Thanksgiving. Bound to be slow.”

“I’d forgotten,” said Kate. “Get back out.” She watched the girl out of the room and moved restlessly back to her desk. And as she looked at an itemized bill for plumbing her left hand strayed to her neck and touched the chain. It was comfort and reassurance.

Chapter 49

[1]

BOTH LEE AND CAL tried to argue Adam out of going to meet the train, the Lark night train from San Francisco to Los Angeles.

Cal said, “Why don’t we let Abra go alone? He’ll want to see her first.”

“I think he won’t know anybody else is there,” said Lee. “So it doesn’t matter whether we go or not.”

“I want to see him get off the train,” said Adam. “He’ll be changed. I want to see what change there is.”

Lee said, “He’s only been gone a couple of months. He can’t be very changed, nor much older.”

“He’ll be changed. Experience will do that.”

“If you go we’ll all have to go,” said Cal.

“Don’t you want to see your brother?” Adam asked sternly.

“Sure, but he won’t want to see me—not right at first.”

“He will too,” said Adam. “Don’t you underrate Aron.”

Lee threw up his hands. “I guess we all go,” he said.

“Can you imagine?” said Adam. “He’ll know so many new things. I wonder if he’ll talk different. You know, Lee, in the East a boy takes on the speech of his school. You can tell a Harvard man from a Princeton man. At least that’s what they say.”

“I’ll listen,” said Lee. “I wonder what dialect they speak at Stanford.” He smiled at Cal.

Adam didn’t think it was funny. “Did you put some fruit in his room?” he asked. “He loves fruit.”

“Pears and apples and muscat grapes,” said Lee.

“Yes, he loves muscats. I remember he loves muscats.”

Under Adam’s urging they got to the Southern Pacific Depot half an hour before the train was due. Abra was already there.

“I can’t come to dinner tomorrow, Lee,” she said. “My father wants me home. I’ll come as soon after as I can.”

“You’re a little breathless,” said Lee.

“Aren’t you?”

“I guess I am,” said Lee. “Look up the track and see if the block’s turned green.”

Train schedules are a matter of pride and of apprehension to nearly everyone. When, far up the track, the block signal snapped from red to green and the long, stabbing probe of the headlight sheered the bend and blared on the station, men looked at their watches and said, “On time.”

There was pride in it, and relief too. The split second has been growing more and more important to us. And as human activities become more and more intermeshed and integrated, the split tenth of a second will emerge, and then a new name must be made for the split hundredth, until one day, although I don’t believe it, we’ll say, “Oh, the hell with it. What’s wrong with an hour?” But it isn’t silly, this preoccupation with small time units. One thing late or early can disrupt everything around it, and the disturbance runs outward in bands like the waves from a dropped stone in a quiet pool.