 LIBRARY OF THE FUTURE (R) 4th Edition  Ver. 5.0
Story of an Hour                        Chopin, Kate           
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                               1894                                         
                       THE STORY OF AN HOUR                                 
                                                                            
                          by Kate Chopin                                    
                                                                            
                                                                            
                                                                            
                                                                            
                                                                            
                                                                            
                                                                            
                                                                            
                                                                            
                                                                            
Electronically Enhanced Text (c) Copyright 1996, World Library(R)           
                                                                            
                      The Story of an Hour                                  
                                                                            
                                                                            
  Knowing that Mrs. Mallard was afflicted with a heart trouble,             
great care was taken to break to her as gently as possible the news of      
her husband's death.                                                        
  It was her sister Josephine who told her, in broken sentences,            
veiled hints that revealed in half concealing. Her husband's friend         
Richards was there, too, near her. It was he who had been in the            
newspaper office when intelligence of the railroad disaster was             
received, with Brently Mallard's name leading the list of "killed." He      
had only taken the time to assure himself of its truth by a second          
telegram, and had hastened to forestall any less careful, less              
tender friend in bearing the sad message.                                   
  She did not hear the story as many women have heard the same, with a      
paralyzed inability to accept its significance. She wept at once, with      
sudden, wild abandonment, in her sister's arms. When the storm of           
grief had spent itself she went away to her room alone. She would have      
no one follow her.                                                          
  There stood, facing the open window, a comfortable, roomy                 
armchair. Into this she sank, pressed down by a physical exhaustion         
that haunted her body and seemed to reach into her soul.                    
  She could see in the open square before her house the tops of             
trees that were all aquiver with the new spring life. The delicious         
breath of rain was in the air. In the street below a peddler was            
crying his wares. The notes of a distant song which some one was            
singing reached her faintly, and countless sparrows were twittering in      
the eaves.                                                                  
  There were patches of blue sky showing here and there through the         
clouds that had met and piled above the other in the west facing her        
window.                                                                     
  She sat with her head thrown back upon the cushion of the chair,          
quite motionless, except when a sob came up into her throat and             
shook her, as a child who has cried itself to sleep continues to sob        
in its dreams.                                                              
  She was young, with a fair, calm face, whose lines bespoke                
repression and even a certain strength. But now there was a dull stare      
in her eyes, whose gaze was fixed away off yonder on one of those           
patches of blue sky. It was not a glance of reflection, but rather          
indicated a suspension of intelligent thought.                              
  There was something coming to her and she was waiting for it,             
fearfully. What was it? She did not know; it was too subtle and             
elusive to name. But she felt it, creeping out of the sky, reaching         
toward her through the sounds, the scents, the color that filled the        
air.                                                                        
  Now her bosom rose and fell tumultuously. She was beginning to            
recognize this thing that was approaching to possess her, and she           
was striving to beat it back with her will- as powerless as her two         
white slender hands would have been.                                        
  When she abandoned herself a little whispered word escaped her            
slightly parted lips. She said it over and over under her breath:           
"Free, free, free!" The vacant stare and the look of terror that had        
followed it went from her eyes. They stayed keen and bright. Her            
pulses beat fast, and the coursing blood warmed and relaxed every inch      
of her body.                                                                
  She did not stop to ask if it were or were not a monstrous joy            
that held her. A clear and exalted perception enabled her to dismiss        
the suggestion as trivial.                                                  
  She knew that she would weep again when she saw the kind, tender          
hands folded in death; the face that had never looked save with love        
upon her, fixed and gray and dead. But she saw beyond that bitter           
moment a long procession of years to come that would belong to her          
absolutely. And she opened and spread her arms out to them in welcome.      
  There would be no one to live for her during those coming years; she      
would live for herself. There would be no powerful will bending her in      
that blind persistence with which men and women believe they have a         
right to impose a private will upon a fellow-creature. A kind               
intention or a cruel intention made the act seem no less a crime as         
she looked upon it in that brief moment of illumination.                    
  And yet she had loved him- sometimes. Often she had not. What did it      
matter! What could love, the unsolved mystery, count for in face of         
this possession of self-assertion which she suddenly recognized as the      
strongest impulse of her being!                                             
  "Free! Body and soul free!" she kept whispering.                          
  Josephine was kneeling before the closed door with her lips to the        
keyhole, imploring for admission. "Louise, open the door! I beg;            
open the door- you will make yourself ill. What are you doing, Louise?      
For heaven's sake open the door."                                           
  "Go away. I am not making myself ill." No; she was drinking in a          
very elixir of life through that open window.                               
  Her fancy was running riot along those days ahead of her. Spring          
days, and summer days, and all sorts of days that would be her own.         
She breathed a quick prayer that life might be long. It was only            
yesterday she had thought with a shudder that life might be long.           
  She arose at length and opened the door to her sister's                   
importunities. There was a feverish triumph in her eyes, and she            
carried herself unwittingly like a goddess of Victory. She clasped her      
sister's waist, and together they descended the stairs. Richards stood      
waiting for them at the bottom.                                             
  Some one was opening the front door with a latchkey. It was               
Brently Mallard who entered, a little travel-stained, composedly            
carrying his grip-sack and umbrella. He had been far from the scene of      
accident, and did not even know there had been one. He stood amazed at      
Josephine's piercing cry; at Richards' quick motion to screen him from      
the view of his wife.                                                       
  But Richards was too late.                                                
  When the doctors came they said she had died of heart disease- of         
joy that kills.                                                             
                                                                            
                                                                            
                               THE END                                      
                                                                            
                                                                            
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Electronically Enhanced Text  @1990-1998 World Library
