wait," he said.

"I wish Harriett and Cyrus would get here," whispered Ruth.

"You telephoned?"

"Before I did you--but of course it's a little farther."

They stood there together in that strange silence, hearing only the
unlifelike breathing of the man passing from life. Listening to it,
Ruth's hand on Deane's arm tightened. Soothingly he patted her hand.

Then, at a movement from the nurse, he stepped quickly to the bed. Ruth
and Ted, close together, first followed, then held back. A minute later
he turned to them. "It's over," he said, in the simple way final things
are said.

There was a choking little cry from Ted. Ruth murmured something, her
face all compassion for him. But after a moment she left her brother and
stood alone beside her father. In that moment of seeing her face, before
turning away because it seemed he should turn away, Deane got one of the
strangest impressions of his life. It was as if she was following her
father--reaching him; as if there was a fullness of feeling, a rising
passionate intensity that could fairly overflow from life. Then she
turned back to Ted.

Cyrus and Harriett had entered. There was a moment when the four
children were there together. Cyrus did not come up to the bed until
Ruth had left. Deane watched his face as--perfunctorily subdued,
decorous, he stood where Ruth had stood a moment before. Then Cyrus
turned to him and together they walked from the room, Cyrus asking why
they had not been telephoned in time.

Deane lingered for a little while, hating to go without again seeing
Ruth and Ted. He tapped at Ruth's door; he was not answered, but the
unlatched door had swung a little open at his touch. He saw that the
brother and sister were out on the little porch opening off Ruth's room.
He went out and stood beside them, knowing that he would be wanted. The
sun was just rising, touching the dew on the grass. The birds were
singing for joy in another day. The three who had just seen death stood
there together in silence.

CHAPTER TWENTY

The two days when the natural course of life was arrested by death had
passed. Their father had been buried that afternoon, and in the early
evening Ted and Ruth were sitting on the little upper porch, very quiet
in the new poignant emptiness of the house. Many people had been coming
and going in those last few days; now that was over and there was a
pause before the routine of life was to be resumed. The fact that the