r minds give out.
Folks say they're love-cracked. Sometimes they die. Yes, Clelia, often
I've thought that would be the easiest. But there's other ways."

Clelia's tears were dried. She sat upright and looked at the woman
opposite. It suddenly seemed to her that she had never known Sabrina.
She had seen her nursing the sick or in the garden, smiling over her
gentle tasks; but she had not known her. Sabrina spoke now with
authority, as if she were passing along the laws of life into hands
outstretched for them.

"When it happened to me, mother was sick. She had creepin' paralysis,
an' I had to be with her 'most every minute. When I got my letter, I was
in the gardin, right there by the spearmint bed. You see I'd written
him, dear, to offer him his freedom; but I found out afterwards I must
have thought, in the bottom of my heart, he wouldn't take it. Well, I
opened the letter. 'Twas a hot summer day like this. He took what I
offered him, dear,--he never knew I cared,--an' he was pleased. The
letter showed it. I spoke out loud. 'O God,' I says, 'I don't believe
it!' Then I heard mother's voice callin' me. She wanted a drink o'
water. I begun steppin' in kind o' blinded, to get it for her. Seemed as
if 'twas miles across the balm-bed. 'I mustn't fall,' I says to myself.
'I mustn't die till mother does.' And then somethin' put it into my head
I needn't believe it nor I needn't give up to it, not till mother died.
Then 'twould be time enough to know I'd got a broken heart."

It almost seemed as if she had never faced her grief before. She
abandoned herself to the savor of it, the girl forgotten.

"Well, mother died, an' that night after the funeral I set down by the
window where I'm settin' now an' says, 'Now I can think it over.' But I
knew as well as anything ever was that when I faced it 'twould take away
my reason. So I says, 'Mother's things have got to be put away. I'll
wait till then.' So I packed up her things, an' sent 'em to her sister
out West. Some o' her common ones 't I'd seen her wear, I burnt up, so
't nobody shouldn't have 'em. I put her old bunnit into the kitchen
stove, an' I can see the cover goin' down on it now. 'Twas thirty-eight
year ago this very summer. Then says I, 'I'll face it.' But old Abner
Lake had a shock, an' there wa'n't nobody to take care of him less'n
they sent him to the town farm, an' folks said he cried night an' day,
knowin' what was before him. So I had him moved over here, an' I