se, then stood
looking thoughtfully at the grotesque brilliancy of that festal-seeming
hillock beneath the darkening November sky. "It's too bad!" he half
whispered, his lips forming the words--and his meaning was that it was
too bad that the strong brother had been the one to go. For this was
his last thought before he walked to the coupe and saw Mary Vertrees
standing, all alone, on the other side of the drive.

She had just emerged from a grove of leafless trees that grew on a
slope where the tombs were many; and behind her rose a multitude of the
barbaric and classic shapes we so strangely strew about our graveyards:
urn-crowned columns and stone-draped obelisks, shop-carved angels and
shop-carved children poising on pillars and shafts, all lifting--in
unthought pathos--their blind stoniness toward the sky. Against such
a background, Bibbs was not incongruous, with his figure, in black, so
long and slender, and his face so long and thin and white; nor was the
undertaker's coupe out of keeping, with the shabby driver dozing on the
box and the shaggy horses standing patiently in attitudes without
hope and without regret. But for Mary Vertrees, here was a grotesque
setting--she was a vivid, living creature of a beautiful world. And a
graveyard is not the place for people to look charming.

She also looked startled and confused, but not more startled and
confused than Bibbs. In "Edith's" poem he had declared his intention of
hiding his heart "among the stars"; and in his boyhood one day he had
successfully hidden his body in the coal-pile. He had been no comrade
of other boys or of girls, and his acquaintances of a recent period were
only a few fellow-invalids and the nurses at the Hood Sanitarium. All
his life Bibbs had kept himself to himself--he was but a shy onlooker in
the world. Nevertheless, the startled gaze he bent upon the
unexpected lady before him had causes other than his shyness and her
unexpectedness. For Mary Vertrees had been a shining figure in the
little world of late given to the view of this humble and elusive
outsider, and spectators sometimes find their hearts beating faster than
those of the actors in the spectacle. Thus with Bibbs now. He started
and stared; he lifted his hat with incredible awkwardness, his fingers
fumbling at his forehead before they found the brim.

"Mr. Sheridan," said Mary, "I'm afraid you'll have to take me home with
you. I--" She stopped, not lacking a momentary awkward