Sometimes I think I'll die, I want it so
much; then it comes over me how ungrateful I am to you and Aunt Ettie,
and I hate myself for the way I treat Wilmer." "Do you love him?" he
insisted.
"Perhaps not like you mean."
All that had been so long obscured in his mind and heart slowly cleared
to understanding--Lucy Braley, Richmond's wife; Phebe; Hannah; and
again Lucy, Lucy Vibard had this common hunger for life, for
brightness; they were as helpless in its grasp as he had been to hold
Hannah. Phebe's return, Martin Eckles--were only incidents in a great
inner need. In itself it wasn't wicked; circumstance had made it seem
wrong; Phebe's greenish hair, the mark of so much spoiled, Hannah's
unhappy death--were the result of aspirations; they fretted and
bruised, even killed themselves, like gay young animals, innocent
animals, in a dark lonely enclosure.
They were really finer than the satisfied women who faded to ugliness
in the solitary homes of the Greenstream mountains; not better, for
example, than Ettie--it might be that they weren't so good, not so high
in heaven; but they were finer in the manner of blooded horses
rebelling against the plow traces. They were more elegant, slimmer,
with a greater fire. That too was the secret of their memorable power
over him; he wanted a companion different from a kitchen drudge; when
he returned home at evening, he wanted a wife cool and sweet in crisp
white with a yellow ribbon about her waist, and store slippers.
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