Those hurt looks, fretted looks, that hard look, already Kate had come to know them, would come, but always to go as Ann would swiftly raise her head to get the song of a bird, or yield her face to the caress of a soft spring breeze.

Katie was grateful to the benign breezes, rich with the messages of opening buds, full, tender, restoring, which could blow away hard memories and bitter visions.

Yet those same breezes had blown yesterday.

Why could they not reach then?
What was it had closed the door and shut in those things that were killing Ann?
What were those things that had filled up and choked Ann's poor soul?
From a hundred different paths she kept approaching it, could not keep away from it.

One read of those things in the papers; they had always seemed to concern a people apart, to be pitied, but not understood, much less reached.