The poor, weakened, faithful old body of her was laid in the graveyard of the poor, and the ships came and went under the empty garret window, and Bebee was all alone.
She had no more anything to work for, or any bond with the lives of others.

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." Love to be perfect must be a religion, as well as a passion.