oy, time ceased to exist for Rose. The days came
and went, lengthening into years, full of duties, leaving her as they
found her, outwardly little changed and habitually calm and kind, but
inwardly sunk in apathy. She moved as if in a dream, seeming to live
in a strange world that would never again seem real--this world without
Billy. Occasionally, she would forget and think he was out in the field
or down in the mine; more rarely still, she would slip even further
backward and wonder what he was about in his play. During these moments
she would feel normal, but some object catching her eye would jerk her
back to the present and the cruel truth. She and Martin had less than
ever to say to each other, though in his own grim way he was more
thoughtful, giving her to understand that there were no longer any
restrictions laid upon her purchasing, and even suggesting that they
remodel the house; as if, she thought impassively, at this late day, it
could matter what she bought or in what she lived. His one interest in
making money, just as if they had some one to leave it to, puzzled
her. Always investing, then reinvesting the interest, and spending
comparatively little of his income, his fortune had now reached the
point where it was growing rapidly of its own momentum and, as there was
nothing to which he looked forward, nothing he particularly wanted to
do, he set himself the task of making it cross the half million mark,
much as a man plays solitaire, to occupy his mind, betting against
himself, to give point to his efforts.

Yet, it gave him a most disconcerting, uncanny start, when one bright
winter day, he faced the fact that he, too, was about to be shovelled
into the great dust-bin. Death was actually at his side, his long, bony
finger on his shoulder and whispering impersonally, "You're next." "Very
much," thought Martin, "like a barber on a busy Saturday." How odd
that here was something that had never entered into his schemes, his
carefully worked out plans! It seemed so unfair--why, he had been
feeling so well, his business had been going on so profitably, there
was something so substantial to the jog of his life, there seemed to be
something of the eternal about it. He had taken ten-year mortgages but a
few days ago, and had bought two thousand dollars' worth of twenty-year
Oklahoma municipals when he could have taken an earlier issue which he
had rejected as maturing too soon. He had forgotten that there was a