"The Story of An Hour" away off yonder on one of those patches of blue sky.

It was not a glance of

Knowing that Mrs. Mallard was afflicted with a heart trouble, great care was taken There was something coming to her and she was waiting for it, fearfully. What was
to break to her as gently as possible the news of her husband's death. it? She did not know; it was too subtle and elusive to name. But she felt it, creeping
It was her sister Josephine who told her, in broken sentences; veiled hints that out of the sky, reaching toward her through the sounds, the scents, the color that
revealed in half concealing. Her husband's friend Richards was there, too, near her. filled the air.
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 Now her bosom rose and fell tumultuously. She was beginning to recognize this
only taken the time to assure himself of its truth by a second telegram, and had thing that was approaching to possess her, and she was striving to beat it back with
hastened to forestall any less careful, less tender friend in bearing the sad message. 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
She did not hear the story as many women have heard the same, with a paralyzed it over and over under hte breath: "free, free, free!" The vacant stare and the look of
inability to accept its significance. She wept at once, with sudden, wild terror that had followed it went from her eyes. They stayed keen and bright. Her
abandonment, in her sister's arms. When the storm of grief had spent itself she went pulses beat fast, and the coursing blood warmed and relaxed every inch of her body.
away to her room alone. She would have no one follow her.
She did not stop to ask if it were or were not a monstrous joy that held her. A clear
There stood, facing the open window, a comfortable, roomy armchair. Into this she and exalted perception enabled her to dismiss the suggestion as trivial. She knew
sank, pressed down by a physical exhaustion that haunted her body and seemed to that she would weep again when she saw the kind, tender hands folded in death;
reach into her soul. 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
She could see in the open square before her house the tops of trees that were all belong to her absolutely. And she opened and spread her arms out to them in
aquiver with the new spring life. The delicious breath of rain was in the air. In the welcome.
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 There would be no one to live for during those coming years; she would live for
eaves. herself. There would be no powerful will bending hers in that blind persistence with
which men and women believe they have a right to impose a private will upon a
There were patches of blue sky showing here and there through the clouds that had fellow-creature. A kind intention or a cruel intention made the act seem no less a
met and piled one above the other in the west facing her window. crime as she looked upon it in that brief moment of illumination.

She sat with her head thrown back upon the cushion of the chair, quite motionless, And yet she had loved him--sometimes. Often she had not. What did it matter! What
except when a sob came up into her throat and shook her, as a child who has cried could love, the unsolved mystery, count for in the face of this possession of self-
itself to sleep continues to sob in its dreams. assertion which she suddenly recognized as the strongest impulse of her being!

She was young, with a fair, calm face, whose lines bespoke repression and even a "Free! Body and soul free!" she kept whispering.
certain strength. But now there was a dull stare in her eyes, whose gaze was fixed
Josephine was kneeling before the closed door with her lips to the keyhold,
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 the 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.

When the doctors came they said she had died of heart disease--of the joy that kills.