"Drowned?" Dorinda's voice was colourless. "Why, she waved to us as we came by." While she spoke, it seemed to her that she could never stop seeing the blue scarf flying round the distraught figure with its violent gestures.
"I know. John Appleseed saw her, but he didn't tell anybody, and when they missed her they didn't know where to look. It was the Haneys' little boy who saw the blue scarf floating on the pond when he was playing by the mill-wheel. For months, they say, she had gone about telling everybody that Jason had murdered her baby; but, of course, it was just a delusion."
"Poor thing." Dorinda turned away and went over to the wood stove where the fire was quite dead. "There was something wrong with her. Even as a girl she was always moping." Out of the fog of weariness there drifted a vision of the red chimneys of Five Oaks. So, like an old wound that begins to ache, the memory of Jason was thrust back into her life.
"Haven't you been to sleep, Minnie May?"
"No, I was listening for you. You came in so softly I hardly heard you."
"Well, you'd better go to bed. We have breakfast at five o'clock."
"Oh, I don't mind. I wake early, and I'll get up and help you pack the butter."
As the girl went up the stairs, Dorinda opened the door of her room and stepped over the threshold. The fire had been freshly made up and a pleasant ruddiness suffused the large quaintly furnished chamber where her parents had lived and died. Nathan had tried to keep the room warm and to sit up for her; but overcome at last by the loneliness and the firelight, he had fallen asleep on the big couch by the hearth. Having removed only his coat, he lay stretched out on his back, snoring slightly, with his jaw drooping above his magenta tie and his glazed collar. His features wore the defenseless look which sleep brings to men and women alike, and she felt, with a pang of sympathy, that he was at her mercy because he cared while she was indifferent. She would be always, she realized, the stronger of the two; for it seemed to her one of the inconsistencies of human nature that strength should be measured by indifference rather than by love.
Picking up the old grey blanket from the foot of the bed, she spread it over him so gently that he did not stir in his sleep. The honesty she had felt in him from the beginning was the single attribute that survived in unconsciousness. If only she could remember his goodness and forget his absurdity, life would be so much easier.
Too tired to do more than let down her hair and slip into a wrapper, she dropped on the bed and drew the patchwork quilt up to her chin. As the firelight flickered over her face, she remembered the night when Rufus was arrested. Now, as then, she felt that the end of endurance was reached. "Even if I am married to Nathan and Geneva has drowned herself, I can't keep awake any longer."