Simmy Dodge emerged from Sherry's at nine-thirty.

He was leaving Mrs.
Fenwick's dinner-dance in response to an appeal from Anne Thorpe, who had sent for him by messenger earlier in the evening.

Simmy was reluctant about going down to the house off Washington Square; he was constituted as one of those who shrink from the unwholesomeness of death rather than from its terrors.

He was fond of Anne, but in his soul he was abusing her for summoning him to bear witness to the final translation of old Templeton Thorpe from a warm, sensitive body, into a cold, unpleasant hulk.

He had no doubt that he had been sent for to see the old man die.