She had been a feature of
features in HIS, for what else was it to have been so
indispensable? Strange beyond saying were the ways of existence,
baffling for him the anomaly of his lack, as he felt it to be, of
producible claim. A woman might have been, as it were, everything
to him, and it might yet present him, in no connexion that any one
seemed held to recognise. If this was the case in these closing
weeks it was the case more sharply on the occasion of the last
offices rendered, in the great grey London cemetery, to what had
been mortal, to what had been precious, in his friend. The
concourse at her grave was not numerous, but he saw himself treated
as scarce more nearly concerned with it than if there had been a
thousand others. He was in short from this moment face to face
with the fact that he was to profit extraordinarily little by the
interest May Bartram had taken in him. He couldn't quite have said
what he expected, but he hadn't surely expected this approach to a
double privation. Not only had her interest failed him, but he
seemed to feel himself unattended--and for a reason he couldn't
seize--by the distinction, the dignity, the propriety, if nothing
else, of the man markedly bereaved.
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