The total incongruity of this in relation to Edward rushed in on Grace Kimlock like fresh air in a stifling room. She discovered that she was smiling.

“You can turn back now,” she announced, giving him her address. “I’d better go home. Somebody might telephone,” she said, suddenly hopeful. “I must be there.”

X

X

Julia and Damon walked home in silence. Now that it was over, the occasion which had supported them, Damon looked haggard and frantic. Julia felt completely passive, an automaton walking step by step across the Common, thrown back into life from the moment of peace, of communion in the church, feeling exhausted as if she could sleep for weeks and not sleep out the exhaustion at the bone. She noticed Damon swinging his arms, playing with his watch chain, like a nervous puppet, adjusting his watch to the Memorial Hall clock as they passed it, scanning the sky, casting, she knew, anxious glances at her, half irritated by her silence.

“Well,” he said, obviously relieved as they turned into their own path, “that’s over,” but it was not clear whether he meant Edward’s funeral or their uncomfortably silent walk.

“Is it? I feel it’s just beginning,” and she did not know which she was answering, for her question fitted them both.

“I must see to the furnace,” he said, evading her. “It’s beastly cold all of a sudden, Julia.”

The heart has gone, Julia thought, in a kind of panic. The heart has just gone. We’re left here alone.

When he came upstairs from the cellar she had two old-fashioneds ready.

“I thought—a drink …” she said, afraid now that it had been the wrong idea. Perhaps it would be safer not to talk.

“Wonderful.” Damon was tearing open the mail, flinging envelopes carelessly torn open into the wastebasket, then he sat down with the New Yorker, unfolded it eagerly and began to look at the jokes. It seemed as if he were looking for life, as if they dropped life along the way and now he would pick it up again. Just then he laughed aloud. “Look at this, Julia—it’s perfect.”

She looked at it, a George Price woman shooting a terrifyingly alive lobster with a pistol. It was very funny, but she couldn’t laugh. The laugh stuck in her throat like a bone.

“Don’t you think it’s funny?” he pursued her in a grieved tone. “Life goes on, Julia,” he said crossly. “I can’t help it.”

“I’m sorry. I just can’t react. The machine has stopped functioning, Damon. Give me a little time.”

He was pulling at his eyebrows sourly, drinking his drink too fast. The heart has gone, she thought again, in panic. We have never loved each other.