"My friend," she began, "I am a woman, and consequently you must expect me to go round about in what I have to say, and you must forgive me when I seem unreasonable."
She lifted her hands and put back her hair.
"I have no religion, as that word is generally defined, but I have a theory of life. I got it out of a book when I was little. In that book the disciples of a wise man came to him and said: 'Master, we can endure no longer being bound to this body, giving it food and drink, and resting it and cleansing it, and going about to court one man after another for its sake. Is not death no evil? Let us depart to whence we came.' And he answered them: 'Doth it smoke in the chamber? If it is not very much I will stay. If too much, I will go out; for remember this always, and hold fast to it that the door is open.' Well, the smoke has come to be intolerable."
She moved in the leaves.
"I have tested my fortune again and again as that wise man said one ought to do. There can be no longer any doubt. It is time for me to go."
The woman looked from the man to the girl standing by the chimney. Her eyes were appealing.
"You must forgive me," she said, "but you must believe me, and you must try to understand me. I want you and Caroline to go on."
She put up her hand.
"No, please hear me to the end of it. I know how the proposal looks to you. It seems cruel. But is it? I am come to the door, and I am going out through it. Is it not more cruel to force me to put my own hand to the latch?"
The woman paused. She sat huddled together in the leaves; there was something old, fated, irrevocable in the pose of her figure.