Elizabeth and her two children are waiting for their father, a miner, to come home after work. He is late. They think he has stayed in one of the pubs to drink. They start supper without him. He still is not back home when it is time for the children to go to bed. Elizabeth goes looking for him in several pubs. Then she hears from her mother-in-law that he has had a fatal accident in the mine. They are bringing his corpse home.

Then Elizabeth heard Matthews, the manager of the pit, say: "You go in first, Jim. Mind!" The door came open, and the two women saw a collier backing into the room, holding one end of a stretcher, on which they could see the nailed pit boots of the dead man. The two carriers halted, the man at the head stooping to the lintel of the door.
"Wheer will you have him?" asked the manager, a short, white-bearded man. Elizabeth roused herself and came from the pantry carrying the unlighted candle.
"In the parlour", she said.
"In there, Jim!" pointed the manager, and the carriers backed round into the tiny room. The coat with which they had covered the body fell off as they awkwardly turned through the two doorways, and the women saw their man, naked to the waist, lying stripped for work. The old woman began to moan in a low voice of horror.
"Lay th' stretcher at th' side," snapped the manager, "an' put 'im on th' cloths. Mind now, mind! look you now ---!"
One of the men had knocked off a vase of chrysanthemums. He stared awkwardly, then they set down the stretcher. Elizabeth did not look at her husband. As soon as she could get in the room, she went and picked up the broken vase and the flowers.
"Wait a minute!" she said.
The three men waited in silence while she mopped up the water with a duster.

"Eh, what a job, what a job, to be sure!" the manager was saying, rubbing his brow with trouble and perplexity. "Sphyxiated, the doctor said. It is the most terrible job I've ever known. Seems as if it was done o' purpose. Clean over him, an' shut 'im in, like a mouse-trap" - he made a sharp, descending gesture with his hand.
The colliers standing by jerked aside their heads in hopeless comment.

Then they heard the girl's voice upstairs calling shrilly: "Mother, mother --- who is it? Mother, who is it?" Elizabeth hurried to the foot of the stairs and opened the door:
"Go to sleep at once - there's nothing ---"
Then she began to mount the stairs. They could hear her on the boards, and on the plaster floor of the little bedroom. They could hear her distinctly.
"What's the matter now? - what's the matter with you, silly thing?" - her voice was much agitated, with an unreal gentleness.
"I thought it was some men come," said the plaintive voice of the child. "Has he come?"
"Yes, they've brought him. There's nothing to make a fuss about. Go to sleep now, like a good child."
They could hear her voice in the bedroom, they waited whilst she covered the children under the bedclothes.
"Is he drunk?" asked the girl, timidly, faintly.
"No! no - he's not! He - he's asleep."
"Is he asleep downstairs?"
"Yes - and don't make a noise."
There was silence for a moment, then the men heard the frightened child again:
"What's that noise?"
"It's nothing. I tell you, what are you bothering for?"

The noise was the grandmother moaning. She was oblivious of everything, sitting on her chair rocking and moaning. The manager put his hand on her arm and bade her "Sh--sh!" The old woman opened her eyes and looked at him. She was shocked by this interruption, and seemed to wonder.
"What time is it?" the plaintive thin voice of the child, sinking back unhappily into sleep, asked this last question.
"Ten o'clock," answered the mother more softly.Then she must have bent down and kissed the children. Matthews beckoned to the men to come away. They put on their caps and took up the stretcher. Stepping over the body, they tiptoed out of the house. None of them spoke till they were far from the wakeful children. When Elizabeth came down she found her mother alone on the parlour floor, leaning over the dead man, the tears dropping on him.
"We must lay him out," the wife said. (...)

Together they stripped the man. When they arose, saw him lying in the naive dignity of death, the women stood arrested in fear and respect. For a few moments they remained still, looking down, the old mother whimpering. Elizabeth felt countermanded. She saw him, how utterly inviolable he lay in himself. She had nothing to do with him. She could not accept it. Stooping, she laid her hand on him, in claim. He was still warm, for the mine was hot where he had died. His mother had his face between her hands, and was murmuring incoherently. The old tears fell in succession as drops from wet leaves, the mother was not weeping, merely her tears flowed. Elizabeth embraced the body of her husband, with cheek and lips. She seemed to be listening, inquiring, trying to get some connection. But she could not. She was driven away. He was impregnable. (...)

Then the old mother rose stiffly, and watched Elizabeth as she carefully washed his face, carefully brushing his big blond moustache from his mouth with the flannel. She was afraid with a bottomless fear, so she ministered to him. The old woman, jealous, said: "Let me wipe him!" - and she kneeled on the other side drying slowly as Elizabeth washed, her big black bonnet sometimes brushing the dark head of her daughter-in-law. They worked thus in silence for a long time. (...)

At last it was finished. He was a man of handsome body, and his face showed no traces of drink. He was blond, full fleshed, with fine limbs. But he was dead.
"Bless him," whispered his mother, looking always at his face, and speaking out of sheer terror. "Dear lad - bless him!". She spoke in a faint, sibilant ecstasy of fear and mother love. Elizabeth sank down again to the floor, and put her face against his neck, and trembled, and shuddered. But she had to draw away again. He was dead, and her living flesh had no place against his.

"White as milk he is, clear as a twelve-month baby, bless him, the darling!" the old mother murmured to herself. "Not a mark on him, clear and clean and white, beautiful as ever a child was made," she murmured with pride.
Elizabeth kept her face hidden.
"He went peaceful, Lizzie - peaceful as sleep. Isn't he beautiful, the lamb? Ay - he must ha' made his peace, Lizzie" (...)

Elizabeth looked up. The man's mouth was fallen back, slightly open under the cover of the moustache. The eyes, half shut, did not show glazed in the obscurity. In her womb was ice of fear, because of this separate stranger with whom she had been living as one flesh. In dread she turned her face away. The fact was too deadly. There had been nothing between them, and yet they had come together, exchanging their nakedness repeatedly. Each time he had taken her, they had been two isolated beings, far apart as now. He was no more responsible than she. The child was like ice in her womb. For as she looked at the dead man, her mind, cold and detached, said clearly: "Who am I? What have I been doing? I have been fighting a husband who did not exist." He existed all the time. She knew she had never seen him, he had never seen her, they had met in the dark and had fought in the dark, not knowing whom they met or whom they fought. And now she saw, and turned silent in seeing. For she had been wrong. She had said he was something he was not. She had felt familiar with him. Whereas he was apart all the while, living as she never lived, feeling as she never felt. She was grateful to death, which restored the truth. And she knew she was not dead. And all the while her heart was bursting with grief and pity for him. She could make no reparation. There were the children - but the children belonged to life. This dead man had nothing to do with them. He and she were only channels through which life had flowed to issue in the children. She was a mother - but how awful she knew it now to have been a wife. And he, dead now, how awful he must have felt it to be a husband. She felt that in the next world he would be a stranger to her. If they met there, in the beyond, they would only be ashamed of what had been before. The children had come, for some mysterious reason, out of both of them. But the children did not unite them. Now he was dead, she knew how eternally he was apart from her, how eternally he had nothing more to do with her. She saw this episode of her life closed. They had denied each other in life. Now he had withdrawn. An anguish came over her. It was finished then. It had become hopeless between them long before he died. Yet he had been her husband. But how little!