He prayed just a minute or two.
Then they followed the coffin out into the hall and back and down by the freight elevator.
A motor hearse was waiting below.
When the burial was over, she came home alone with Joe. She sat in the living-room watching his face, while the dusk grew mercifully deep. Then she made him eat some supper and take something to make him sleep. And later in her own small room she lay on her bed, dishevelled, tearless, her mind stunned, her feelings queer and uneven, now surging up, now cold and still.
"Where has she gone? What do I know? . . . What do I believe?
Where is God? . . . What is life? What am I here for?"
With a pang she recalled the town in Ohio where she and Amy had been born, and her thoughts went drifting for awhile. Pictures floated in and out, pictures of her life at home. She was hungry for them now, the old stays and firm supports, the old frame house, her father and the God in the yellow church, the quiet river, the high school and that friendly group of eager girl companions, with work, discussions, young ideals, plans and dreams of life and love. . . . All up by the roots in a few swift weeks!
"Shall I go back?" she asked herself. "Do I want to go—now that Dad is dead, and most of the girls have gone away, scattered all over the country?" Again she lapsed. "I'm too dull to think." She let the pictures drift again. Church sociables, a Christmas tree, dances, suppers and buggy rides, picnics by the river. How small and very far-away and trivial they now appeared. All had pointed toward New York. "Go back and marry, settle down? Do I want to? No. And anyhow, there's Joe and Susette. My place is right here—and I'm going to stay. But what is it going to mean to me? What do I want in this city now?"
In the turmoil, startled, she looked about her for a purpose, some ideal. But the old beliefs seemed dim; the new ones, garish and confused. She recalled those faces of Amy's friends. "Yes, cheap and tough, for all their clothes!" Or was it just this ghastly time that had made them all appear so?
Again she thought of her sister dead. "Oh Amy—Amy! Where have you gone?" And at last, quite suddenly, the tears came, and she huddled and shook on her bed.