Then the man, this townsman, this smooth-haired, smooth-lipped man, looked at the mother full and carelessly and well he knew what had befallen her, and she knew he knew and she hung her head in silence. But the man said carelessly, “Come then, lad,” and the two went away and left her there alone.
Now well she knew she had no hope from this man. Nor did she want him any more, her body had been weak so long. But this last sight of him was the last touch she needed. She felt the lump she called her heart melt somehow and the tears rushed to her eyes, and she rose and walked by a little unused path across the land to a rude lonely grave she knew, the grave of some unknown man or woman, so old none knew whose it was now, and she sat there on the grassy mound and waited. And at last she wept.
First her tears came slow and bitter but freely after a while and then she laid her head against the grave and wept in the way that women do when their hearts are too full with sorrow of their life and spilled and running over and they care no more except they must be eased somehow because all of life is too heavy for them. And the sound of her weeping reached the little hamlet even, borne on the winds of spring, and hearing it the mothers in the houses and the wives looked at each other and they said softly, “Let her weep, poor soul, and ease herself. She has not been eased these many months of widowhood. Tell her children to let her weep.”
And so they let her weep.
But after long weeping the mother heard a sound, a soft rustling there beside her, and looking up in the twilight, for she had wept until the sun was set, there came her daughter, feeling her way over the rough ground and she cried as she came, “Oh, mother, my cousin’s wife said let you weep until you eased yourself, but are you not eased yet with so much weeping?”
Then was the mother roused. She was roused and she looked at the child and sighed and she sat up and smoothed back her loosened hair and wiped her swollen eyes and rose and the child put out her hand and felt for her mother’s hand, shutting her eyes against the shining evening glow that was rosy where the sun went down, and she said plaintively, “I wish I never had to weep, for when I weep, my tears do burn me so!”
At these few words the mother came to herself, suddenly washed clean. Yes, these few words, spoken at the end of such a day, this small young hand feeling for her, called her back from some despair where she had lived these many months. She was mother again and she looked at her child and coming clear at last from out her daze she cried, “Are your eyes worse, my child?”
And the girl answered, “I think I am as I ever was, except light seems to burn me more, and I do not see your faces clear as once I did, and now my brother grows so tall, I cannot tell if it be you or he who comes, unless I hear you speak.”
Then the mother, leading this child of hers most tenderly, groaned to herself, “Where have I been these many days? Child, I will go tomorrow when dawn comes and buy some balm to make you well as I ever said I would!”