![]() ![]() Richards stood waiting for them at the bottom. She clasped her sister's waist, and together There was a feverish triumph in her eyes, and she carried herself unwittingly She arose at length and opened the door to her sister's importunities. Thought with a shudder that life might be long. She breathedĪ quick prayer that life might be long. Spring days,Īnd summer days, and all sorts of days that would be her own. Her fancy was running riot along those days ahead of her. I am not making myself ill." No she was drinking in a very What are you doing, Louise? For heaven's sake "Louise, open the door! I beg open the door-you Josephine was kneeling before the closed door with her lips to the keyhold, "Free! Body and soul free!" she kept whispering. What did it matter! What could love, the unsolved mystery, count for in the face of this possession of self-assertion which she suddenly recognized as the strongest impulse of her being! Intention made the act seem no less a crime as she looked upon it in thatĪnd yet she had loved him-sometimes. Impose a private will upon a fellow-creature. There would be no powerful will bending hers in thatīlind persistence with which men and women believe they have a right to There would be no one to live for during those coming years she would Moment a long procession of years to come that would belong to her absolutely.Īnd she opened and spread her arms out to them in welcome. Tender hands folded in death the face that had never looked save with She knew that she would weep again when she saw the kind, A clear and exalted perception enabled her to dismiss the suggestionĪs trivial. ![]() She did not stop to ask if it were or were not a monstrous joy that held Her pulses beat fast,Īnd the coursing blood warmed and relaxed every inch of her body. "free, free, free!" The vacant stare and the look of terror that had followed She said it over and over under hte breath: When she abandoned herself a little whispered word escaped This thing that was approaching to possess her, and she was striving toīeat it back with her will-as powerless as her two white slender hands ![]() Now her bosom rose and fell tumultuously. The sounds, the scents, the color that filled the air. What was it? She did not know it was too subtle and elusive to name.īut she felt it, creeping out of the sky, reaching toward her through There was something coming to her and she was waiting for it, fearfully. It was not a glance of reflection, but rather indicated a suspension of Whose gaze was fixed away off yonder on one of those patches of blue sky. But now there was a dull stare in her eyes, She was young, with a fair, calm face, whose lines bespoke repressionĪnd even a certain strength. Motionless, except when a sob came up into her throat and shook her, asĪ child who has cried itself to sleep continues to sob in its dreams. She sat with her head thrown back upon the cushion of the chair, quite That had met and piled one above the other in the west facing her window. There were patches of blue sky showing here and there through the clouds Notes of a distant song which some one was singing reached her faintly,Īnd countless sparrows were twittering in the eaves. In the street below a peddler was crying his wares. Were all aquiver with the new spring life. She could see in the open square before her house the tops of trees that This she sank, pressed down by a physical exhaustion that haunted her There stood, facing the open window, a comfortable, roomy armchair. Had spent itself she went away to her room alone. Sudden, wild abandonment, in her sister's arms. Paralyzed inability to accept its significance. She did not hear the story as many women have heard the same, with a To forestall any less careful, less tender friend in bearing the sad message. To assure himself of its truth by a second telegram, and had hastened Mallard's name leading the list of "killed." He had only taken the time When intelligence of the railroad disaster was received, with Brently It was he who had been in the newspaper office It was her sister Josephine who told her, in broken sentences veiled Was taken to break to her as gently as possible the news of her husband's Mallard was afflicted with a heart trouble, great care "The Story of an Hour" "The Story of An Hour" Kate Chopin (1894) ![]()
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