Dr. Willoughby stepped forward and began a passage which at first seemed unfamiliar, “Who bends not his eare to any bell which upon any occasion rings? But who can remove it from that bell, which is passing a peece of himself out of this world?” But then like a musical phrase, forgotten but bringing back in total recall whole areas long buried, the quiet voice went on, “No man is an Iland, intire of itself; every man is a peece of the Continent, a part of the maine”; if there had been stillness in the church before, the stillness of private thoughts, there now fell a complete intense stillness and the separate individuals became one, lifted like a wave toward the presence of the dead, suddenly alive among them in that communion which he had not been able to find in life—“if a Clod be washed away by the Sea, Europe is the lesse, as well as if a Promontorie were, as well as if a Mannor of thy friends or of thine owne were; any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankinde; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee.” Dr. Willoughby paused a moment before leading the congregation in the Lord’s Prayer, and in that second of deeply shared emotion, the thing they had all been waiting for came to pass.

Isabel in the front pew alone felt the wave behind her, felt it lift her up beyond herself, like a release from bondage. Tenderness for her brother filled her like a blessing. He’s at peace now, she thought. He doesn’t have to be torn to pieces any longer. “Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.”

Before anyone was prepared for it, before George Hastings knew what he was doing, the coffin was being carried down among them and out of the door. Now for the first time, Edward Cavan, the person, was among them. It was terribly evident that it was he himself who was leaving them in the long box. To George bearing the heavy weight on his shoulder, it had become a gesture of support and love, the gesture he had not been able to make that day so long ago when he could not answer. Only like this, Edward Cavan’s will gone, dead, could we be allowed to help, to support, to lift, to love. Pen, sitting at the back, saw his face, strained by the physical effort he was making, but at the same time dreadfully grieving. Why can’t I love him? she thought, aching at the barrier between them. What is it that separates us?