He noticed that
the Major's tremulousness did not disappear, as they drove up the
street, and that he seemed much feebler than during the summer.
Principally, however, George was concerned with his own emotion, or
rather, with his lack of emotion; and the anxious sympathy of his
grandfather and his uncle made him feel hypocritical. He was not
grief-stricken; but he felt that he ought to be, and, with a secret
shame, concealed his callousness beneath an affectation of solemnity.
But when he was taken into the room where lay what was left of Wilbur
Minafer, George had no longer to pretend; his grief was sufficient.
It needed only the sight of that forever inert semblance of the quiet
man who had been always so quiet a part of his son's life--so quiet a
part that George had seldom been consciously aware that his father was
indeed a. part of his life. As the figure lay there, its very
quietness was what was most lifelike; and suddenly it struck George
hard. And in that unexpected, racking grief of his son, Wilbur
Minafer became more vividly George's father than he had ever been in
life.
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