“Not at all,” Dick replied, with a new ring in his voice. “You're right. I've been ten sorts of a fool, but I know now what I'm going to do. Take your paper, old friend, and for my sake go out and clear Jud Clark. Put up a headstone to him, if you like, a good one. I'll buy it.”
“And what will you be doing in the meantime?”
Dick stretched and threw out his arms.
“Me?” he said. “What should I be doing, old man? I'm going home.”
XLV
Lucy Crosby was dead. One moment she was of the quick, moving about the house, glancing in at David, having Minnie in the kitchen pin and unpin her veil; and the next she was still and infinitely mysterious, on her white bed. She had fallen outside the door of David's room, and lay there, her arms still full of fresh bath towels, and a fixed and intense look in her eyes, as though, outside the door, she had come face to face with a messenger who bore surprising news. Doctor Reynolds, running up the stairs, found her there dead, and closed the door into David's room.
But David knew before they told him. He waited until they had placed her on her bed, had closed her eyes and drawn a white coverlet over her, and then he went in alone, and sat down beside her, and put a hand over her chilling one.
“If you are still here, Lucy,” he said, “and have not yet gone on, I want you to carry this with you. We are all right, here. Everybody is all right. You are not to worry.”
After a time he went back to his room and got his prayer-book. He could hear Harrison Miller's voice soothing Minnie in the lower hall, and Reynolds at the telephone. He went back into the quiet chamber, and opening the prayer-book, began to read aloud.