Until now she had been lifted up on the drama of death—played on this stage where she was, for today, the heroine, the one who could tell the story. Now John had brought it all back to the human scale; she was suddenly bereft and at a loss; she trembled as she put coffee on again to heat. Or would he prefer sherry? Yes, the small cut glasses Jane had always demanded when he came.

“Here,” she said, “Miss Tuttle always asked for the best glasses for you.”

“Sit down, Hannah. You need a glass yourself.”

And she did—on a straight chair.

“We knew it would happen, didn’t we?” he said gently. “But it’s worse than we could know.”

“When the breath stops and there’s no one there,” Hannah sobbed, “it’s so lonely!”

But kindness was such a built-in part of the ugly old woman sitting awkwardly on the edge of her chair, that she managed to pull herself together and tell John what comfort it had given Jane to know that he had really got going on the chapter, and, although she had been unable to read it all, she had sat, Hannah told him, with the pages of manuscript in her hands for an hour, looking content.

“It will be better now,” he answered. “Because I can speak of her, and now it will be a memorial. Oh, Hannah, the worst—isn’t it?—is that we can do so little—nothing really—for the dead. So I am happy I can do this one thing.”

What would Hannah do now, he longed to ask, but sensed that it was too soon.

“Yes, I slept a whole night through for the first time in years,” she said. “There was no reason to wake.”