Important Quotations Explained
1. When
I had been there a little longer, and had seen this phase of crystal
clearness followed by long stretches of sunless cold; when the storms
of February had pitched their white tents about the devoted village
and the wild cavalry of March winds had charged down to their support;
I began to understand why Starkfield emerged from its six months' siege
like a starved garrison capitulating without quarter.
2. Against
the dark background of the kitchen she stood up tall and angular,
one hand drawing a quilted counterpane to her flat breast, while
the other held a lamp. The light . . . drew out of the darkness
her puckered throat and the projecting wrist of the hand that clutched
the quilt, and deepened fantastically the hollows and prominences
of her high-boned face under its rings of crimping-pins.
3. He
knew that most young men made nothing at all of giving a pretty
girl a kiss, and he remembered that the night before, when he had
put his arm about Mattie, she had not resisted. But that had been
out-of-doors, under the open irresponsible night. Now, in the warm
lamplit room, with all its ancient implications of conformity and
order, she seemed infinitely farther away from him and more unapproachable.
4. All
the long misery of his baffled past, of his youth of failure, hardship
and vain effort, rose up in his soul in bitterness and seemed to
take shape before him in the woman who at every turn had barred
his way. She had taken everything else from him; and now she meant
to take the one thing that made up for all the others. For a moment
such a flame of hate rose in him that it ran down his arm and clenched
his fist against her. He took a wild step forward and then stopped.
“You're—you're
not coming down?” he said in a bewildered voice.
5. There
was one day, about a week after the accident, when they all thought
Mattie couldn't live. Well, I say it's a pity she
did .
. . if [Mattie] ha' died, Ethan might ha' lived; and the way they
are now, I don't see's there's much difference between the Fromes
up at the farm and the Fromes down in the graveyard; 'cept that
down there they're all quiet, and the women have got to hold their
tongues.
