Ethan Frome

by Edith Wharton

It was not that Mrs. Ned Hale felt, or affected, any social superiority to the people about her; it was only that the accident of a finer sensibility and a little more education had put just enough distance between herself and her neighbours to enable her to judge them with detachment.

Sickness and trouble: that's what Ethan's had his plate full up with, ever since the very first helping."

Such tastes and acquirements in a man of his condition made the contrast more poignant between his outer situation and his inner needs,

But something in his past history, or in his present way of living, had apparently driven him too deeply into himself for any casual impulse to draw him back to his kind.

It seemed to be a part of the thickening darkness, to be the winter night itself descending on us layer by layer.

"She don't look much on housework, but she ain't a fretter, anyhow."

in his unhappiest moments field and sky spoke to him with a deep and powerful persuasion.

She was quick to learn, but forgetful and dreamy, and not disposed to take the matter seriously.

The motions of her mind were as incalculable as the flit of a bird in the branches.

The mere fact of obeying her orders, of feeling free to go about his business again and talk with other men, restored his shaken balance and magnified his sense of what he owed her.

felt himself on the brink of eloquence;

She pronounced the word married as if her voice caressed it. It seemed a rustling covert leading to enchanted glades.

The sudden heat of his tone made her colour mount again, not with a rush, but gradually, delicately, like the reflection of a thought stealing slowly across her heart.

struggled on for years with "troubles," but they almost always succumbed to "complications."

Ethan looked at her with loathing. She was no longer the listless creature who had lived at his side in a state of sullen self-absorption, but a mysterious alien presence, an evil energy secreted from the long years of silent brooding.

Confused motions of rebellion stormed in him. He was too young, too strong, too full of the sap of living, to submit so easily to the destruction of his hopes.

He looked out at the slopes bathed in lustre, the silver-edged darkness of the woods, the spectral purple of the hills against the sky, and it seemed as though all the beauty of the night had been poured out to mock his wretchedness...

The early mist had vanished and the fields lay like a silver shield under the sun. It was one of the days when the glitter of winter shines through a pale haze of spring. Every yard of the road was alive with Mattie's presence, and there was hardly a branch against the sky or a tangle of brambles on the bank in which some bright shred of memory was not caught. Once, in the stillness, the call of a bird in a mountain ash was so like her laughter that his heart tightened and then grew large; and all these things made him see that something must be done at once.

It seemed to Ethan that his heart was bound with cords which an unseen hand was tightening with every tick of the clock.

He wanted to get the feeling of it into his hand, so that it would sleep there like a seed in winter.

The sky, swollen with the clouds that announce a thaw, hung as low as before a summer storm. He strained his eyes through the dimness, and they seemed less keen, less capable than usual.