“Don’t!” said Miss Howe.
But the Baxter girl looked as if she couldn’t stop herself.
“We—we put her into the past tense—d’you notice how easily we’re doing it already?—but—is she less alive to you, less lovable, less Madala Grey to you, because of a telegram and a funeral service? is she?”
“No,” said Miss Howe. “If you put it like that—no.”
“Yes,” said Mr. Flood. “When you put it like that—yes.”
“She must be somewhere,” argued the Baxter girl. “She can’t just stop.”
“Why not?” said Mr. Flood, with his bored smile.
“She can’t. I feel it,” she said with her hand at her heart and her large eyes on him.
“I don’t,” he said to her, and he lost his smile. “‘Dust to dust——’”
The woman behind him moved restlessly.