He felt all the more sorry for the girl because misfortune had, in a sense, indentured her to them. Zeena, at any rate, did not apply the principle in her own case. Zeena took the view that Mattie was bound to make the best of Starkfield since she hadn't any other place to go to but this did not strike Ethan as conclusive. And all the first winter, how she had shivered with cold when the northerly gales shook the thin clapboards and the snow beat like hail against the loose-hung windows! He had been afraid that she would hate the hard life, the cold and loneliness but not a sign of discontent escaped her. How the girl had changed since she had come to Starkfield! He remembered what a colourless slip of a thing she had looked the day he had met her at the station. It was part of the sun's red and of the pure glitter on the snow. Now, in the bright morning air, her face was still before him. But since he had seen her lips in the lamplight he felt that they were his. Even a few minutes earlier, when they had stood alone outside the house, he would not have dared to think of kissing her. Why had he not kissed her when he held her there? A few hours earlier he would not have asked himself the question. Ethan felt confusedly that there were many things he ought to think about, but through his tingling veins and tired brain only one sensation throbbed: the warmth of Mattie's shoulder against his. Then the room grew perfectly black, and not a sound was audible but Zeena's asthmatic breathing. He kept his eyes fixed on the light till it vanished. As he lay there he could hear Mattie moving about in her room, and her candle, sending its small ray across the landing, drew a scarcely perceptible line of light under his door. Ethan undressed hurriedly and blew out the light so that he should not see her when he took his place at her side. She had measured out some drops from a medicine-bottle on a chair by the bed and, after swallowing them, and wrapping her head in a piece of yellow flannel, had lain down with her face turned away. He and Zeena had not exchanged a word after the door of their room had closed on them. It was in the early morning stillness, when his muscles were swinging to their familiar task and his lungs expanding with long draughts of mountain air, that Ethan did his clearest thinking. The sunrise burned red in a pure sky, the shadows on the rim of the wood-lot were darkly blue, and beyond the white and scintillating fields patches of far-off forest hung like smoke.

The winter morning was as clear as crystal.

There was some hauling to be done at the lower end of the wood-lot, and Ethan was out early the next day.

Wharton edith ethan frome