Later on they went, rather rapidly, to the cemetery. There was a sort of indecent haste about it; instead of the slow and mournful carriage procession of her childhood, moving with reluctance toward the outskirts of town, the long line of automobiles twisted and darted through the traffic. It was an incredibly short time until they were standing on heavy mats under a great marquee, with a rose-lined pit at their feet, and old Lucius's ugly shaft towering beside it. What was it her mother had wanted to put on the shaft? "He has followed the trail into the sunset." And they had not let her do it. Her poor mother. "Your mother's different, but she hadn't your courage. She never did get away." Well, she had got away now. Her poor mother.
"For as much as it hath pleased Almighty God"
It had been raining. They made their way back to the limousine through a thin moist covering, into which Aunt Bessie's high heels sunk and left little pits behind her. She was very smart in her black clothes; she always looked her best in black. And the best people followed decorously, also making small pits in the ground, and got into their limousines and drove rapidly home for tea and a rest before dressing for dinner.
Kay was stunned. She had known that it would come, but the dreadful finality of it, the horror of leaving that delicate, carefully nurtured body out there alone in the cold earth was horrible to her. And with this there was remorse, that she had added to the distress of the last few months, that she might even have hastened the end.
In the car she reached out and took her father's hand, but although he pressed it he released it very soon. He sat staring ahead, his silk hat just grazing the top of the car, his heavy figure lurching with the movement of the car, dry-eyed, silent, solitary. She could not reach him. She never had reached him, really. After awhile Bessie opened her vanity case and powdered her reddened nose, and then they were at home again.
The sickly odor of flowers still hung over the house, the servants and the undertaker's men were folding up the camp chairs and carrying them out, and in the hall was Herbert,
