of praise.

Was it worth the cost? The question scarcely framed itself with such
clearness in her mind, but so her thoughts were tending. Thus to
live, as hardly, as courageously, and to be so sorely missed when
she departed, few women were fit for this. As for herself ...

The sky, flooded with moonlight, was of a wonderful lambency and
depth; across the whole arch of heaven a band of cloud, fashioned
strangely into carven shapes, defiled in solemn march. The white
ground no longer spoke of chill and desolateness, for the air was
soft; and by some magic of the approaching spring the snow appeared
to be only a mask covering the earth's face, in nowise terrifying--a
mask one knew must soon be lifted.

Maria seated by the little window fixed her unconscious eyes upon
the sky and the fields stretching away whitely to the environing
woods, and of a sudden it was borne to her that the question she was
asking herself had just received its answer. To dwell in this land
as her mother had dwelt, and, dying thus, to leave behind her a
sorrowing husband and a record of the virtues of her race, she knew
in her heart she was fit for that. In reckoning with herself there
was no trace of vanity; rather did the response seem from without.
Yes, she was able; and she was filled with wonderment as though at
the shining of some unlooked-for light.

Thus she too could live; but ... it was not as yet in her heart so
to do ... In a little while, this season of mourning at an end,
Lorenzo Surprenant would come back from the States for the third
time and would bear her away to the unknown delights of the
city--away from the great forest she hated--away from that cruel
land where men who go astray perish helplessly, where women endure
endless torment the while ineffectual aid is sought for them over
the long roads buried in snow. Why should she stay here to toil and
suffer when she might escape to the lands of the south and a happier
life.

The soft breeze telling of spring came against the window, bringing
a confusion of gentle sounds; the swish and sigh of branches swaying
and touching one another, the distant hooting of an owl. Then the
great silence reigned once more. Samuel Chapdelaine was sleeping;
but in this repose beside the dead was nothing unseemly or wanting
in respect; chin fallen on his breast, bands lying open on his
knees, he seemed to be plunged into the very depths of sorrow or
striving to relinquish life that he might f