The Story of an Hour

No; she was drinking in a very elixir of life through that open window.

He had only taken the time to assure himself of its truth by a second telegram, and had hastened to forestall any less careful, less tender friend in bearing the sad message.

She did not know; it was too subtle and elusive to name.

There would be no powerful will bending hers in that blind persistence with which men and women believe they ahve a right to impose a private will upon a fellow-creature.

She wept at once, with sudden, wild abandonment, in her sister's arms.

Josephine was kneeling before the closed door with her lips to the keyhold, imploring for admission.

He stood amazed at Josephine's piercing cry; at Richards' quick motion to screen him from the view of his wife.

There were patches of blue sky showing here and there through the clouds that had met and piled one above the other in the west facing her window.

She did not hear the story as many women have heard the same, with a paralyzed inability to accept its significance.

It was not a glance of reflection, but rather indicated a suspension of intelligent thought.

They stayed keen and bright.

But she felt it, creeping out of the sky, reaching toward her through the sounds, the scents, the color that filled the air.

He had been far from the scene of the accident, and did not even know there had been one.

There was a feverish triumph in her eyes, and she carried herself unwittingly like a goddess of Victory.

She clasped her sister's waist, and together they descended the stairs.

It was he who had been in the newspaper office when intelligence of the railroad disaster was received, with Brently Mallard's name leading the list of "killed."

Into this she sank, pressed down by a physical exhaustion that haunted her body and seemed to reach into her soul.

It was he who had been in the newspaper office when intelligence of the railroad disaster was received, with Brently Mallard's name leading the list of "killed."

She was beginning to recognize this thing that was approaching to possess her, and she was striving to beat it back with her will--as powerless as her two white slender hands would have been.