" She went
restlessly to the window, and threw open the broken blind. As the
radiance of the afternoon flooded the place with light, I seemed to see
it and its wasting occupant, here in this horrible desolation, in the
changing seasons, when the window gave on the bitter rigors of blue and
white winter mornings, the land choked with snow, on the golden blur of
autumn, on the tender mists of April, draping the earth, and forever the
cry of the waves on the shore haunting the air. That there was nothing
of the mad woman about her, that she had retained reason in such a
place, in such a room, with an eating grief to bear, impressed me as one
of the marvels of the brain's endurance, with which nature sometimes
surprises us. It seemed to me that this might be the hour of partial
deliverance to the poor soul who had evidently lived and died so much.
"Why have you stayed here?" I asked. She had now taken the chair
fronting me. We were stiffly seated as if for a business interview. I
had a desire to take the poor figure in my arms, but I felt as if she
were as intangible as a spirit. When mental pain has devoured the body,
as physical pain so often does, there is something thrice as ethereal
about the wreck.
"What difference could it make?" she asked in her slightly husky voice,
with faint surprise. "It is only the old love-story of a village girl
you will hear.
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