The dream faded. Before him rose her face of the morning, impassive and cool; her eyes, not hostile but indifferent. She had taken herself out of his life, had turned her youth to youth, and forgotten him. He understood and accepted it. He saw himself as he must have looked to her, old and worn, scarred from the last months, infinitely changed. And she was young. Heavens, how young she was!...
Lucy was buried the next afternoon. It was raining, and the quiet procession followed Dick and the others who carried her light body under grotesquely bobbing umbrellas. Then he and David, and Minnie and Mike, went back to the house, quiet with that strange emptiness that follows a death, the unconscious listening for a voice that will not speak again, for a familiar footfall. David had not gone upstairs. He sat in Lucy's sitting-room, in his old frock coat and black tie, with a knitted afghan across his knees. His throat looked withered in his loose collar. And there for the first time they discussed the future.
“You're giving up a great deal, Dick,” David said. “I'm proud of you, and like you I think the money's best where it is. But this is a prejudiced town, and they think you've treated Elizabeth badly. If you don't intend to tell the story—”
“Never,” Dick announced, firmly. “Judson Clark is dead.” He smiled at David with something of his old humor. “I told Bassett to put up a monument if he wanted to. But you're right about one thing. They're not ready to take me back. I've seen it a dozen times in the last two days.”
“I never gave up a fight yet.” David's voice was grim.
“On the other hand, I don't want to make it uncomfortable for her. We are bound to meet. I'm putting my own feeling aside. It doesn't matter—except of course to me. What I thought was—We might go into the city. Reynolds would buy the house. He's going to be married.”
But he found himself up against the stone wall of David's opposition. He was too old to be uprooted. He liked to be able to find his way around in the dark. He was almost childish about it, and perhaps a trifle terrified. But it was his final argument that won Dick over.
“I thought you'd found out there's nothing in running away from trouble.”
Dick straightened.
“You're right,” he said. “We'll stay here and fight it out together.”