“I am glad you like my room,” she said. “It is here that I spend most of my time. Often lately I have had my dinner here. Page goes out a great deal now, and so I am left alone occasionally. Last night I sat here in the dark for a long time. The house was so still, everybody was out⁠—even some of the servants. It was so warm, I raised the windows and I sat here for hours looking out over the lake. I could hear it lapping and washing against the shore⁠—almost like a sea. And it was so still, so still; and I was thinking of the time when I was a little girl back at Barrington, years and years ago, picking whortleberries down in the water lot, and how I got lost once in the corn⁠—the stalks were away above my head⁠—and how happy I was when my father would take me up on the hay wagon. Ah, I was happy in those days⁠—just a freckled, black-haired slip of a little girl, with my frock torn and my hands all scratched with the berry bushes.”