Goldberg never entered a Christian church without feeling himself drawn down into a whirlpool of anguish of different kinds. For him the word “Jesus Christ” was a terrible word. He could not hear it without remembering centuries of pogroms, his father’s stories of their grandfather’s village in Russia and the terrors of Easter when the Christians went forth to kill any Jews not locked up in their houses, the doors double barred and their hearts like animal hearts feeling only the fear of the hunted. Here he was, sitting cold as a stuffed fish among the goyim, for the sake of Edward Cavan. Many times an unbeliever, since he did not even believe (as the old Italian printer did, whom he had taken down to the front rows) that Edward was a fighter in the true cause of socialism. Nothing here today, except the presence of the two Columbia professors and Warlock, the poet, spoke to him of his own loss. He was terribly a stranger, forced into ridiculous clothes to parade his grief among strangers. And his teeth were clenched with the effort not to put on his one defense, that smile of superiority and contempt.

“Death is a dirty trick,” George Hastings was thinking. He had hoped for some ultimate saving word that would frame all he had fumbled to say himself. But the long familiar passages from the Bible left him cold. Also he was too self-conscious to feel anything, being, as he was, one of four students chosen to carry the coffin out at the appointed time. Pleased to have been asked, pleased by this sign of his “belonging,” he now regretted the honor which lay upon him and kept him from paying attention, for he kept imagining catastrophe—that he would stumble at the crucial moment and the coffin lurch horribly to the floor. Responsibility kept him apart.