Now, sitting, watching the brave helpless trees she could go no farther. She had a child whom she loved and who was the wound of another love upon her.
—Trees do not think, they are brave helplessly. Why am I not brave? Trees lift into air. I am buried.
She was buried. Her friends and her relations, seeing her Mrs. Luve, buried her daily. Her child, seeing her mother, buried her daily. Her husband, a distant stroke in a far world, ploughing, ploughing like steel ... heaping the soil of his ploughings forever upon her, buried.
—Trees do not think. I try to think. Thinking is bad for Winter. Thinking is bad for Spring. Thinking chills Spring. Thinking calls sap to Winter which Winter kills. Yet I must think ... for I am motionless. To think is to move when one is motionless. Trees move forever. Leaf and trunk move upward, circle out: seed moves downward, inward. Trees swing forever so they are thoughtless. But I am a broken curve, a splintered part of a Circle I cannot see.... My thought’s a finger feeling from the line of my brokenness for a Roundness beyond me.
—What am I going to do? How am I going to think?
She was the wife of Harry Howland Luve. Pretty clever astounding Fanny Dirk: here’s a riddle for your independence, which we ... your Town ... have had to swallow ever since you were a child bossing your schoolmates, snubbing the smart young men, running through the gray-mossed tangles of our thoughts and ways like an April wind through a sleepy August. You have shocked us, angered us, made us love and accept you. You caught the best match of Town ... here is a riddle for you, smartie Fanny Dirk!
He will come back: she was very quick to find her own way, her own words for it: yet who of us dare say she was not always the lady? Mrs. Harry Luve. He will come back. Nothing for her after all but to sit and wait him....
She had a dream. Her bed was a vast blackness.—It is white, I have no eyes so my bed is black. It was soft and rich, it was comfortable. She lay within it, folded, lost, and it was white vast comfort all about her. A Hand from a sharp wrist thrust down, clasped her throat ... pressed. She was pressed deeper within the bed: as the Hand pressed down her throat was deep beneath her body, deep beneath her head: her mind and her blood rushed down from her head and body to her swollen throat that a white Hand pressed. The bed unfolded lip within lip as had her body when Harry loved her: now her body cut deep into the bed ... enfolded it was lost in the bed’s blind comfort.... She saw the Hand that pressed her down by the throat. Upon one finger was the ring of Harry: upon another finger was the wedding ring she had worn secret for a year, and was the diamond ring set in platinum which he had given her later. The Hand was colorless like the shell of a departed locust. The wrist above it was long and red and moist. The Hand, pinning her throat, was dry, her throat was dry. She lay there cased in her hot bed ... frozen: under a Hand that pinned her.
She got up. She went to her child and held her in her arms. Edith slept. She held her close against her breast. She stiffened her arms in order to be still. Within, a voice shrieked: “Wake, wake!” It touched the air through her hardened nipples. It touched her child. Edith awoke. She placed her back in her crib.
“Sleep, daughter ... always sleep.”