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sitting-room.
‘I’ve done now, sir. Will you come and look at ‘im and see
it’s all right?’
Philip followed her. Cronshaw was lying on his back,
with his eyes closed and his hands folded piously across his
chest.
‘You ought by rights to ‘ave a few flowers, sir.’
‘I’ll get some tomorrow.’
She gave the body a glance of satisfaction. She had per-
formed her job, and now she rolled down her sleeves, took
off her apron, and put on her bonnet. Philip asked her how
much he owed her.
‘Well, sir, some give me two and sixpence and some give
me five shillings.’
Philip was ashamed to give her less than the larger sum.
She thanked him with just so much effusiveness as was
seemly in presence of the grief he might be supposed to
feel, and left him. Philip went back into his sitting-room,
cleared away the remains of his supper, and sat down to
read Walsham’s Surgery. He found it difficult. He felt sin-
gularly nervous. When there was a sound on the stairs he
jumped, and his heart beat violently. That thing in the ad-
joining room, which had been a man and now was nothing,
frightened him. The silence seemed alive, as if some myste-
rious movement were taking place within it; the presence
of death weighed upon these rooms, unearthly and terri-
fying: Philip felt a sudden horror for what had once been
his friend. He tried to force himself to read, but presently
pushed away his book in despair. What troubled him was