All the things from Mario’s pockets were in the doctor’s bag. Word of the accident had first been taken to the office, that address being the only one to be found on the body. There the manager had done all that remained to be done. The tall man was the manager from the office. Joanna remembered afterwards how the loose flesh of his face hung down under his cheeks and chin, like a hound’s dew-laps, and he had great pouches under his eyes.

IX

After the funeral, Joanna did not see the sun for a fortnight. She never went out, not even to the garden.

She alone had followed the coffin to the grave, for Maddalena still lay in a darkened room. But she had not seen her dead husband. The Brothers at the Misericordia supported the doctor in this; and thinking to treasure her last sight of him alive, Joanna had not insisted. The bicycle, she had seen. It was crushed and twisted, as might have been a penny toy.

She did not weep. But when she was not tending Maddalena she sat huddled up, her head on her hands, her eyes staring into distance. And a deep vertical line came between her brows.

At first, all the time, and again and again, she was irresistibly trying to re-live the experience which had been Mario’s in the moment of meeting death. It was as if, before grieving for her own loss, she must share this thing with him. She saw the cross-roads, where she had once been with him, the hidden, noiseless carriage, the tearing bicycle, with Mario on it – part of it. There must have been one clear, frantic moment of knowledge. Then the smash. Joanna lived through it with every sinew and nerve in her body strung. They had brought not a word, not even a cry for her to hold on to. If only there had come the smallest message. Why had he been riding on the wrong side? It was not like him. Yet it was like him to be wiped out in a moment.

In spite of her obedience to the Brothers, when she tried now to call up the white, vivid face which had been so delightful to her, she could only see it agonized, infuriated, or piteously disfigured. Was it because she had disobeyed him that last day? Why else should he look so angry with her in death? She tried to put the thought from her, but it recurred. Each night she prayed on her knees that she might dream of him smiling at her; but she slept hardly at all, and when she did she started awake with murder on her soul.