She could live on the roots of her garden and the sale of her
hens' eggs, and she could change the turnips and carrots that grew in a
little strip of her ground for the quantity of bread that she needed.
So she gave herself up to the books, and drew herself more and more
within from the outer world. She did not know that the neighbors thought
very evil of her; she had only one idea in her mind--to be more worthy of
him against he should return.
The winter passed away somehow, she did not know how.
It was a long, cold, white blank of frozen silence: that was all. She
studied hard, and had got a quaint, strange, deep, scattered knowledge
out of her old books; her face had lost all its roundness and color, but,
instead, the forehead had gained breadth and the eyes had the dim fire of
a student's.
Every night when she shut her volumes she thought,--
"I am a little nearer him. I know a little more."
Just so every morning, when she bathed her hands in the chilly water, she
thought to herself, "I will make my skin as soft as I can for him, that
it may be like the ladies' he has loved.
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