She enjoyed great parties when she would sit up talking and dancing and drinking all night, but it always seemed to her that being alone, especially alone in her house, was the realest part of life. Now she could let out the three parakeets without fear they would be stepped on or that Stowey would let them out one of the doors; she could dust the plants, then break off suddenly and pick up an old novel and read from the middle on; improvise cha-chas on the harp; and finally, the best part of all, simply sit at the plank table in the kitchen with a bottle of wine and the newspapers, reading the ads as well as the news, registering nothing on her mind but letting her soul suspend itself above all wishing and desire. She did this now, comfortably aware of the mist running down the windows, of the silence outside, of the dark afternoon it was getting to be. She fell asleep leaning on her hand, hearing the house creaking as though it were a living a private life of its own these two hundred years, hearing the birds rustling in their cages and the occasional whirring of wings as one of them landed on the table and walked across the newspaper to perch in the crook of her arm. Every few minutes she would awaken for a moment to review things: Stowey, yes, was on his way south, and the two boys were away in school, and nothing was burning on the stove, and Lucretia was coming for dinner and bringing three guests of hers. Then she fell asleep again as suddenly as a person with fever, and when she awoke it was dark outside and the clarity was back in her eyes. She stood up, smoothing her hair down, straightening her clothes, feeling a thankfulness for the enveloping darkness outside, and, above everything else, for the absence of the need to answer, to respond, to be aware even of Stowey coming in or going out, and yet, now that she was beginning to cook, she glimpsed a future without him, a future alone like this, and the pain made her head writhe, and in a moment she found it hard to wait for Lucretia to come with her guests. She went into the living room and turned on three lamps, then back into the kitchen where she turned on the ceiling light and the switch that lit the floods on the barn, illuminating the driveway. She knew she was feeling afraid and inwardly laughed at herself. They were both so young, after all, so unready for any final parting. How could it have been thirty years already, she wondered? But yes, nineteen plus thirty was forty-nine, and she was forty-nine and she had been married at nineteen. She stood still over the leg of lamb, rubbing herbs into it, quite suddenly conscious of a nausea in her stomach and a feeling of wrath, a sensation of violence that started her shivering.