IV.
Waking in the blackness before dawn, she heard John Abner come downstairs and stop in the hall to light his lantern.
"I ought to go out to the milking," she thought, and then more slowly, "I can't believe that Nathan is dead."
Would the idea ever grow familiar to her? Could she ever live with the fact, acknowledged and yet unregarded, as she had lived with the fact of her marriage? "There never was a better man in the world," she said aloud. Here on the farm she found herself missing him with the first vague sense of loss. The insensibility which had protected her at the station disappeared when her mind dwelt on his good qualities,—his kindness, his charity, his broad tolerance of her prejudices. She knew that she should miss him more and more in all the details of the farm, and th
