“Oh no, she can’t think that,” Grace said, caught as she always was by his bait. “I gave her a piece of my mind before she left. I simply had to, Edward. She was talking such perfect nonsense, fantastic stories about the corruption among the Socialists in England. She gets it all from her husband, of course.”

“People believe what they want to believe”—he got up—“that’s what it all comes to in the end.”

They stood looking back a moment at the dreamy pond, at the long row of beeches reflected on one side, and the Gothic redstone tombs on the other, their roofs covered with long grass, even bushes. This was the oldest part of the cemetery, perfectly Victorian, before the Greek temple came into fashion. “How many times did we have to listen to the story of Roosevelt’s walking on the water? People actually believed it, you know,” and he turned away, as if he were suddenly very tired.

Even Grace felt subdued, tamed by his atmosphere of passive negation. They were moving out to one of the uglier and more crowded parts of this city of the dead, and Grace broke away to do something, anything to break the depression which was creeping upon her as if out of the ground. She amused herself by reading the names on the tombstones.

“Good Lord,” she ejaculated suddenly, “here’s old Mrs. Bowditch. Whatever is she doing here?” Then, as she saw the other names near by, “Oh yes, of course she was a Merritt, wasn’t she? She must have wanted to revert.” She was astonished to hear, like a reprieve, Edward’s sudden amused laugh.

“I expect we do tend to revert,” he said, still laughing, and then more soberly, “I wonder what I am reverting to——”

“You’re too young to revert to anything, Edward,” she said in her natural tone of voice, acid and commanding. It really seemed as if they were coming out from a long tunnel. Just then, as if to make this sensation tangible, a male pheasant ran out from behind a rhododendron bush, stood for a second quite still, alerted, his head high, as Grace laid a hand on Edward’s arm to warn him. It lasted a few seconds, the bird’s wild bright glance, his standing there a few feet away in all his brilliance of red and gold and black, and then he was off with a little short run and a loud whirr and disappeared over the hillside.

But they had had the vision. The excitement of it coursed through Grace like electricity. It released for her the words she had been holding back for a half-hour. Now she could say them, her hand still on Edward’s arm. “It’s all so beautiful, Edward,” she said in a rush. “And so short, really,” she added, meaning life perhaps. Then, quite gently, “I wish I could help.”