It was a cold gray day, leaves and dust skirling about in a dirty wind, bits of old newspaper flapping against the fence. The few leaves still on the trees looked tired, and Grace Kimlock as she walked down Brattle Street thought all this appropriate, a restless disintegration, Cambridge itself where the green lawns were slowly being eaten up by apartment houses and the old frame houses needed paint, having lost all dignity and charm. Not thinking of Edward to whose funeral she was going, she thought of these things, the constant flow of noisy trucks down Brattle Street which used to be an ample thoroughfare, stately and peaceful. It’s all gone or going, she thought, and we are old and tired. She stubbed her toe quite painfully on a brick that the root of a tree had lifted slightly, and stopped for a moment to catch her breath, for she had been walking fast. Just then the bell of Christ Church began to toll, each long low ring reaching out like the ripples in a pond when a pebble falls, reaching out into the cold air, into the wind with imperative and calming solemnity. And Grace Kimlock walked against it, walked fast against it as if to shut it out, for now she was afraid, she was lonely, she felt bitterly that Orlando Fosca was not there to support her, though he had explained that the ushers must be there much earlier, and he must be sure that Warlock, the distinguished poet, was properly met, as well as two Columbia professors. She disliked the idea of the funeral; she would have preferred the college chapel where she felt at home, for one thing. As a Unitarian, the child and grandchild of Unitarians, she would be uncomfortable in the atmosphere of Edward’s church. “Mumbo jumbo”—she sniffed—“buffoonery,” she muttered to herself, as she turned up past Radcliffe College, now quickening her pace, a wave of sudden excitement shooting through her. This excitement which she could not control, which made her feel slightly trembly all over, was disturbing. She reminded herself that a funeral is not a play. She felt absolutely no emotion, no grief, only this wild excitement as if something were about to happen. For three days they had been waiting for this hour, suspended in the unfamiliar corrupting, disturbing element of Edward’s deed—was it that? That there would be some definite end at last, some finality?