As the dancers poured out of the hall Frome, drawing back behind the
projecting storm-door, watched the segregation of the grotesquely
muffled groups, in which a moving lantern ray now and then lit up a
face flushed with food and dancing. The villagers, being afoot, were
the first to climb the slope to the main street, while the country
neighbours packed themselves more slowly into the sleighs under the
shed.

"Ain't you riding, Mattie?" a woman's voice called back from the throng
about the shed, and Ethan's heart gave a jump. From where he stood he
could not see the persons coming out of the hall till they had advanced
a few steps beyond the wooden sides of the storm-door; but through its
cracks he heard a clear voice answer: "Mercy no! Not on such a night."

She was there, then, close to him, only a thin board between. In another
moment she would step forth into the night, and his eyes, accustomed
to the obscurity, would discern her as clearly as though she stood in
daylight. A wave of shyness pulled him back into the dark angle of the
wall, and he stood there in silence instead of making his presence known
to her. It had been one of the wonders of their intercourse that from
the first, she, the quicker, finer, more expressive, instead of crushing
him by the contrast, had given him something of her own ease and
freedom; but now he felt as heavy and loutish as in his student days,
when he had tried to "jolly" the Worcester girls at a picnic.

He hung back, and she came out alone and paused within a few yards of
him. She was almost the last to leave the hall, and she stood looking
uncertainly about her as if wondering why he did not show himself.
Then a man's figure approached, coming so close to her that under their
formless wrappings they seemed merged in one dim outline.

"Gentleman friend gone back on you? Say, Matt, that's tough! No, I
wouldn't be mean enough to tell the other girls. I ain't as low-down as
that." (How Frome hated his cheap banter!) "But look at here, ain't it
lucky I got the old man's cutter down there waiting for us?"

Frome heard the girl's voice, gaily incredulous: "What on earth's your
father's cutter doin' down there?"

"Why, waiting for me to take a ride. I got the roan colt too. I kinder
knew I'd want to take a ride to-night," Eady, in his triumph, tried to
put a sentimental note into his bragging voice.

The girl seemed to waver, and Frome saw her twirl the end of her scarf
irresolutely about her fingers. Not for the world would he have made
a sign to her, though it seemed to him that his life hung on her next
gesture.

"Hold on a minute while I unhitch the colt," Denis called to her,
springing toward the shed.

She stood perfectly still, looking after him, in an attitude of tranquil
expectancy torturing to the hidden watcher. Frome noticed that she no
longer turned her head from side to side, as though peering through the
night for another figure. She let Denis Eady lead out the horse, climb
into the cutter and fling back the bearskin to make room for her at his
side; then, with a swift motion of flight, she turned about and darted
up the slope toward the front of the church.

"Good-bye! Hope you'll have a lovely ride!" she called back to him over
her shoulder.

Denis laughed, and gave the horse a cut that brought him quickly abreast
of her retreating figure.

"Come along! Get in quick! It's as slippery as thunder on this turn," he
cried, leaning over to reach out a hand to her.

She laughed back at him: "Good-night! I'm not getting in."

By this time they had passed beyond Frome's earshot and he could only
follow the shadowy pantomime of their silhouettes as they continued
to move along the crest of the slope above him. He saw Eady, after a
moment, jump from the cutter and go toward the girl with the reins over
one arm. The other he tried to slip through hers; but she eluded him
nimbly, and Frome's heart, which had swung out over a black void,
trembled back to safety. A moment later he heard the jingle of departing
sleigh bells and discerned a figure advancing alone toward the empty
expanse of snow before the church.

In the black shade of the Varnum spruces he caught up with her and she
turned with a quick "Oh!"

"Think I'd forgotten you, Matt?" he asked with sheepish glee.

She answered seriously: "I thought maybe you couldn't come back for me."

"Couldn't? What on earth could stop me?"

"I knew Zeena wasn't feeling any too good to-day."

"Oh, she's in bed long ago." He paused, a question struggling in him.
"Then you meant to walk home all alone?"

"Oh, I ain't afraid!" she laughed.

They stood together in the gloom of the spruces, an empty world
glimmering about them wide and grey under the stars. He brought his
question out.

"If you thought I hadn't come, why didn't you ride back with Denis
Eady?"

"Why, where were you? How did you know? I never saw you!"

Her wonder and his laughter ran together like spring rills in a thaw.
Ethan had the sense of having done something arch and ingenious. To
prolong the effect he groped for a dazzling phrase, and brought out, in
a growl of rapture: "Come along."

He slipped an arm through hers, as Eady had done, and fancied it was
faintly pressed against her side, but neither of them moved. It was so
dark under the spruces that he could barely see the shape of her head
beside his shoulder. He longed to stoop his cheek and rub it against
her scarf. He would have liked to stand there with her all night in the
blackness. She moved forward a step or two and then paused again above
the dip of the Corbury road. Its icy slope, scored by innumerable
runners, looked like a mirror scratched by travellers at an inn.

"There was a whole lot of them coasting before the moon set," she said.

"Would you like to come in and coast with them some night?" he asked.

"Oh, would you, Ethan? It would be lovely!"

"We'll come to-morrow if there's a moon."

She lingered, pressing closer to his side. "Ned Hale and Ruth Varnum
came just as near running into the big elm at the bottom. We were all
sure they were killed." Her shiver ran down his arm. "Wouldn't it have
been too awful? They're so happy!"

"Oh, Ned ain't much at steering. I guess I can take you down all right!"
he said disdainfully.

He was aware that he was "talking big," like Denis Eady; but his
reaction of joy had unsteadied him, and the inflection with which she
had said of the engaged couple "They're so happy!" made the words sound
as if she had been thinking of herself and him.

"The elm is dangerous, though. It ought to be cut down," she insisted.

"Would you be afraid of it, with me?"

"I told you I ain't the kind to be afraid" she tossed back, almost
indifferently; and suddenly she began to walk on with a rapid step.

These alterations of mood were the despair and joy of Ethan Frome. The
motions of her mind were as incalculable as the flit of a bird in the
branches. The fact that he had no right to show his feelings, and thus
provoke the expression of hers, made him attach a fantastic importance
to every change in her look and tone. Now he thought she understood him,
and feared; now he was sure she did not, and despaired. To-night the
pressure of accumulated misgivings sent the scale drooping toward
despair, and her indifference was the more chilling after the flush of
joy into which she had plunged him by dismissing Denis Eady. He mounted
School House Hill at her side and walked on in silence till they
reached the lane leading to the saw-mill; then the need of some definite
assurance grew too strong for him.

"You'd have found me right off if you hadn't gone back to have that last
reel with Denis," he brought out awkwardly. He could not pronounce the
name without a stiffening of the muscles of his throat.

"Why, Ethan, how could I tell you were there?"

"I suppose what folks say is true," he jerked out at her, instead of
answering.

She stopped short, and he felt, in the darkness, that her face was
lifted quickly to his. "Why, what do folks say?"

"It's natural enough you should be leaving us" he floundered on,
following his thought.

"Is that what they say?" she mocked back at him; then, with a sudden
drop of her sweet treble: "You mean that Zeena--ain't suited with me any
more?" she faltered.

Their arms had slipped apart and they stood motionless, each seeking to
distinguish the other's face.

"I know I ain't anything like as smart as I ought to be," she went on,
while he vainly struggled for expression. "There's lots of things a
hired girl could do that come awkward to me still--and I haven't got much
strength in my arms. But if she'd only tell me I'd try. You know she
hardly ever says anything, and sometimes I can see she ain't suited,
and yet I don't know why." She turned on him with a sudden flash of
indignation. "You'd ought to tell me, Ethan Frome--you'd ought to! Unless
you want me to go too--"

Unless he wanted her to go too! The cry was balm to his raw wound. The
iron heavens seemed to melt and rain down sweetness. Again he struggled
for the all-expressive word, and again, his arm in hers, found only a
deep "Come along."

They walked on in silence through the blackness of the hemlock-shaded
lane, where Ethan's sawmill gloomed through the night, and out again
into the comparative clearness of the fields. On the farther side of the
hemlock belt the open country rolled away before them grey and lonely
under the stars. Sometimes their way led them under the shade of an
overhanging bank or through the thin obscurity of a clump of leafless
trees. Here and there a farmhouse stood far back among the fields, mute
and cold as a grave-stone. The night was so still that they heard the
frozen snow crackle under their feet. The crash of a loaded branch
falling far off in the woods reverberated like a musket-shot, and once a
fox barked, and Mattie shrank closer to Ethan, and quickened her steps.

At length they sighted the group of larches at Ethan's gate, and as they
drew near it the sense that the walk was over brought back his words.

"Then you don't want to leave us, Matt?"

He had to stoop his head to catch her stifled whisper: "Where'd I go, if
I did?"

The answer sent a pang through him but the tone suffused him with joy.
He forgot what else he had meant to say and pressed her against him so
closely that he seemed to feel her warmth in his veins.

"You ain't crying are you, Matt?"

"No, of course I'm not," she quavered.

They turned in at the gate and passed under the shaded knoll where,
enclosed in a low fence, the Frome grave-stones slanted at crazy angles
through the snow. Ethan looked at them curiously. For years that quiet
company had mocked his restlessness, his desire for change and freedom.
"We never got away--how should you?" seemed to be written on every
headstone; and whenever he went in or out of his gate he thought with a
shiver: "I shall just go on living here till I join them." But now all
desire for change had vanished, and the sight of the little enclosure
gave him a warm sense of continuance and stability.

"I guess we'll never let you go, Matt," he whispered, as though even the
dead, lovers once, must conspire with him to keep her; and brushing by
the graves, he thought: "We'll always go on living here together, and
some day she'll lie there beside me."

He let the vision possess him as they climbed the hill to the house.
He was never so happy with her as when he abandoned himself to these
dreams. Half-way up the slope Mattie stumbled against some unseen
obstruction and clutched his sleeve to steady herself. The wave of
warmth that went through him was like the prolongation of his vision.
For the first time he stole his arm about her, and she did not resist.
They walked on as if they were floating on a summer stream.

Zeena always went to bed as soon as she had had her supper, and the
shutterless windows of the house were dark. A dead cucumber-vine dangled
from the porch like the crape streamer tied to the door for a death, and
the thought flashed through Ethan's brain: "If it was there for Zeena--"
Then he had a distinct sight of his wife lying in their bedroom asleep,
her mouth slightly open, her false teeth in a tumbler by the bed...

They walked around to the back of the house, between the rigid
gooseberry bushes. It was Zeena's habit, when they came back late from
the village, to leave the key of the kitchen door under the mat. Ethan
stood before the door, his head heavy with dreams, his arm still about
Mattie. "Matt--" he began, not knowing what he meant to say.

She slipped out of his hold without speaking, and he stooped down and
felt for the key.

"It's not there!" he said, straightening himself with a start.

They strained their eyes at each other through the icy darkness. Such a
thing had never happened before.

"Maybe she's forgotten it," Mattie said in a tremulous whisper; but both
of them knew that it was not like Zeena to forget.

"It might have fallen off into the snow," Mattie continued, after a
pause during which they had stood intently listening.

"It must have been pushed off, then," he rejoined in the same tone.
Another wild thought tore through him. What if tramps had been
there--what if...

Again he listened, fancying he heard a distant sound in the house; then
he felt in his pocket for a match, and kneeling down, passed its light
slowly over the rough edges of snow about the doorstep.

He was still kneeling when his eyes, on a level with the lower panel of
the door, caught a faint ray beneath it. Who could be stirring in that
silent house? He heard a step on the stairs, and again for an instant
the thought of tramps tore through him. Then the door opened and he saw
his wife.

Against the dark background of the kitchen she stood up tall and
angular, one hand drawing a quilted counterpane to her flat breast,
while the other held a lamp. The light, on a level with her chin, drew
out of the darkness her puckered throat and the projecting wrist of the
hand that clutched the quilt, and deepened fantastically the hollows and
prominences of her high-boned face under its ring of crimping-pins. To
Ethan, still in the rosy haze of his hour with Mattie, the sight came
with the intense precision of the last dream before waking. He felt as
if he had never before known what his wife looked like.

She drew aside without speaking, and Mattie and Ethan passed into the
kitchen, which had the deadly chill of a vault after the dry cold of the
night.

"Guess you forgot about us, Zeena," Ethan joked, stamping the snow from
his boots.

"No. I just felt so mean I couldn't sleep."

Mattie came forward, unwinding her wraps, the colour of the cherry scarf
in her fresh lips and cheeks. "I'm so sorry, Zeena! Isn't there anything
I can do?"

"No; there's nothing." Zeena turned away from her. "You might 'a' shook
off that snow outside," she said to her husband.

She walked out of the kitchen ahead of them and pausing in the hall
raised the lamp at arm's-length, as if to light them up the stairs.

Ethan paused also, affecting to fumble for the peg on which he hung his
coat and cap. The doors of the two bedrooms faced each other across the
narrow upper landing, and to-night it was peculiarly repugnant to him
that Mattie should see him follow Zeena.

"I guess I won't come up yet awhile," he said, turning as if to go back
to the kitchen.

Zeena stopped short and looked at him. "For the land's sake--what you
going to do down here?"

"I've got the mill accounts to go over."

She continued to stare at him, the flame of the unshaded lamp bringing
out with microscopic cruelty the fretful lines of her face.

"At this time o' night? You'll ketch your death. The fire's out long
ago."

Without answering he moved away toward the kitchen. As he did so his
glance crossed Mattie's and he fancied that a fugitive warning gleamed
through her lashes. The next moment they sank to her flushed cheeks and
she began to mount the stairs ahead of Zeena.

"That's so. It is powerful cold down here," Ethan assented; and with
lowered head he went up in his wife's wake, and followed her across the
threshold of their room.

As the youths rush out of the church basement Ethan stands back and watches. It is a merry scene. He hears a woman call out to Mattie, asking her if she plans on doing a little sledding tonight. Ethan feels his pulse suddenly race. Mattie declines the offer to sled, citing weather. Ethan is very near Mattie, though they can't see each other. Ethan knows Mattie will show herself soon, and that as his eyes are adjusted to the dark, he'll be able to see her clearly. Shyness takes him and he hides a little more. Mattie's who Ethan thinks is a brighter, easier person than himself, had helped bring him out of his shell, and had helped lighten him up. But now Ethan feels uneasy, like back when he was in college, and "had tried to 'jolly' the girls" . Mattie, one of the last to exit the dance, looks around, maybe like she's looking for Ethan. A man walks near her. The man insinuates that Mattie has been stood-up by Ethan, and says he has his dad's "cutter" to help rectify the situation. He wants to use it to sled with Mattie. Ethan is in suspense. Denis fetches the old cutter, but Mattie laughingly refuses his advances. He continues trying to persuade her, and they move beyond Ethan's range of sight and vision. Ethan hears Eady drive up, and he runs to Mattie, and asks her if she thought he'd stood her up. Mattie says she didn't; but that she thought maybe Zeena was sick. Ethan assures her this is not the case, and asks Mattie if she intended to walk home all by herself. Excitedly, she says she is not afraid of the long walk home. Ethan asks why she didn't accept Denis' offer to drive her. Mattie asks how he knew about the Denis thing, laughing. They walk on, arm in arm, in the darkness. Ethan desires to rub his check on Mattie's scarf. Instead, he asks Mattie if she'd like to make a coasting date with him. They decide to have a little coasting adventure the following night, provided the moon is bright. Mattie tells Ethan that the other night Ned Hale and Ruth Varnum had almost met their deaths by accidentally crashing into an elm tree at the bottom of the slope. It would have been so sad, because Ned and Ruth are happy and in love. Ethan claims he can take that elm tree with his sled anytime, and asks if Mattie would still be afraid of the elm if he were driving the sled. She says she's not the fearful kind, but she says it like she doesn't care. Mattie is a person of quickly changing moods. Ethan doesn't feel he has "the right to show his feelings" and find out hers . So he's constantly trying to read every little thing she does and says to see if she likes him, and knows he likes her. Right now he thinks she doesn't care. When she dissed Denis Eady he felt joy. Now he feels almost like there is no hope. But Ethan needs to know if she likes him, and so he tries to provoke her a little. He suggests that if she hadn't danced that extra dance with Denis Eady, she would have seen Ethan right away. She doesn't try to defend herself. He takes the more direct approach and says he imagines that the rumors are true. She wants to know what rumors he's talking about. Rumors, he tells her, that she'll be leaving the Frome household soon. Mattie begins to freak out, and she asks Ethan if Zeena has had enough of her. She says she knows she's not the most excellent helper in the world, but that she could do better if Zeena would just express her needs a little more. Mattie can tell by Zeena's face that she isn't happy with her. She begs Ethan to tell her what Zeena needs - unless he too wants to see her gone. Of course he doesn't want her to go. Her words soothe him. He knows she wants to stay. They walk together quietly. When they hear a gunshot, and then a fox bark, Mattie snuggles up closer to Ethan and then begins to walk faster. He asks her if she for sure doesn't want to leave the Frome house. She asks him where she would possibly go if she left, and Ethan thinks she might be crying, though she denies it when he asks her. He feels her warm body next to his. They walk in though the gate of the Frome house, and passed "the Frome grave-stones slanted at crazy angles through the snow" . The gravestones seem to speak to Ethan. Taunting him they seem to say, if they couldn't escape Starkfield, how could Ethan? Ethan has the sudden thought that he will be stuck in Starkfield until he dies. He knows he has to find a way to keep Mattie with him forever, and he imagines being buried with her when they both die. When he has thoughts like that he feels happy. Mattie trips and steadies herself by yanking on Ethan's sleeve. He puts his arms around her for the first time. She doesn't try to stop him. They walk together this way. Zeena is probably in bed. She always goes to bed right after she eats. The windows of the house are dark. Ethan sees "a dead cucumber vine" drooping off the porch . Sometimes people tie a streamer to a door handle when a person formerly living in the house has died. The vine reminds Ethan of one of those. He imagines it might be for Zeena. Ethan imagines her lying upstairs now, in bed, with her mouth open. Zeena doesn't have any of her own teeth left. He imagines her fake teeth, in a cup by their bed. Zeena usually locks the door and leaves the key under the mat for Ethan and Mattie. Ethan and Mattie stop groping each other, and Ethan goes for the key. Alas! The key is not to be found. A bit of a panic ensues. Something stirs from within the house. The door opens. Zeena appears. She has a blanket wrapped around herself with one hand, and is holding onto a lamp with the other. Her face is cast in shadows. She looks very different to Ethan, than ever before. Ethan and Mattie walk into the bitterly cold kitchen. He asks Zeena if she forgot the key. She says, "No. I just felt so mean I couldn't sleep" Mattie understands this to mean that Zeena has been feeling physically ill and rushes to her offering sympathy and help. Zeena refuses, and gripes at her for not stomping her boots before entering the house. Then she walks over to the stairs. Ethan wants make sure that Mattie goes up before he does. Otherwise, she might seem him walking into the bedroom with Zeena, and he doesn't like the idea of this. So, Ethan says he's going to stay down and do a little accounting work. Zeena says he'll get sick if he works without heat. He looks at Mattie as he walks away toward the kitchen, and she looks a little afraid. When she's safely headed up the stairs, he agrees with Zeena about the cold, and follows her up the stairs.

As the dancers leave the hall, Ethan draws back into the shadows to watch and listen. A woman asks if Mattie will ride home, and she says no. Ethan anticipates being able to see Mattie and pulls farther into the shadows to watch. Mattie, lively and outgoing, has helped to pull Ethan out of his shell, but at the moment he is as withdrawn as during his student days. Mattie comes out and pauses, looking uncertainly into the night. Denis Eady comes close to her and teases her about her missing gentleman friend; he then offers to drive her home himself. Ethan listens incredulously and watches as Mattie wavers. As Denis unhitches his horse and climbs in the cutter, Mattie runs up the hill away from him, calling good-bye. Denis, however, won't give up yet. As he dashes for her, she laughs and says no again; Denis then jumps out to grab her. Ethan hears the sleigh bells departing. He then makes out a lone female figure on the expanse of snow before the church. Ethan catches up with Mattie and surprises her. He wants to know if she has thought he has forgotten her. Mattie replies that she knows Zeena has been very sick, and that she thought he had been kept at home. She also adds that she is not afraid to walk home alone. Ethan wants to know why she didn't ride with Denis Eady. Mattie is surprised at his questions and wonders how he knows. Ethan laughs, thinking he has done something clever by hiding. He then takes Mattie's arm and says, "Come along." Mattie moves forward onto the slope, which is scarred by the runners of sleds. She wistfully says that earlier there were lots of coasters. Ethan asks if she would like to coast with him one evening. She eagerly gives a positive response, and Ethan promises they will come back tomorrow. Mattie tells him that Ned Hale and Ruth Varnum, so in love and so happy, nearly ran into the big elm tree at the bottom of the slope and died. Ethan promises that he is better at steering than Ned Hale. He knows he is "talking big," but he is happy. Mattie says the elm tree should be cut down, for it is too dangerous. Ethan asks, "Would you be afraid of it with me?" Mattie assures him that she "ain't the kind to be afraid." She then walks ahead rapidly. Ethan knows he has no right to show his feelings, but the despair and joy he feels with Mattie rule his life. At the moment he is dipping towards despair as he and Mattie walk in silence. Finally Ethan tells her that she would have seen him if she had not danced the last dance with Denis, a name that Ethan has trouble saying. Mattie is bewildered by Ethan's talk until he explains that the townsfolk say she will be leaving soon. Mattie quickly realizes that this means Zeena is not happy with her. The two slip apart and stand motionless. Mattie then makes a short speech about how she knows Zeena is not always happy with her work, but never tells her what is wrong. Mattie wants to do better and be appreciated. Her momentary anger flashes at Ethan, and she accuses him of wanting her to leave as well. Ethan tells Mattie he never wants her to go and struggles for a word to express his happiness with. The words do not form, so he again says, "Come along." They walk into the still landscape in silence, but Mattie huddles closer to him when a fox barks. When they near the trees at Ethan's gate, he asks her if she wants to leave. She says she has nowhere to go. Again, Ethan is pleased, but also pained. He hugs her, and she tries not to cry. They walk in the gate and pass the Frome graveyard, where the headstones always seem to mock him for his one-time effort to get away. Ethan shivers at the thought that he will live dully in Starkfield until he joins his ancestors in the grave. With Mattie at his side, however, change no longer seems so necessary. He turns to Mattie and tells her that they will never let her go. Ethan then imagines he and Mattie buried together in the graveyard some day. As they climb up to the house, Mattie trips, and Ethan puts his arm around her. He feels like he is floating on a "summer stream." When they arrive, the house is dark, which means Zeena is in bed. Ethan briefly imagines that the dead cucumber vine near the door is actually a funeral wreath, and that if Zeena were only--. He is then struck by the vision of his wife in bed with her false teeth in a glass by her side. Ethan and Mattie walk around the back to where Zeena usually leaves a key. He is just about to speak to her when he realizes that the key is not there, a situation that has never happened before. It is not like Zeena to forget anything. Ethan wonders if it has fallen in the snow or if tramps have come along and broken in. When Ethan lights a match to search the snow, he realizes there is a light on in the house. Then the door opens to reveal Zeena. She holds her lamp high, so the hollows and points of her face are noticeable; it is a completely different face than Mattie's smooth one. Ethan feels that he has seen his wife for the first time. When Zeena steps aside silently, Ethan and Mattie walk into the chilly house. Ethan tries to joke with Zeena, but she does not respond; she says she was feeling too mean to sleep. Mattie asks if there is something she can do, but Zeena responds in the negative. She then reprimands Ethan for shaking snow off his boots indoors. Zeena lights the way upstairs, but Ethan does not want to go. Zeena stares after him with the flame of her lamp again showing the cruel contours of her face. Ethan moves away and glances at Mattie quickly. He thinks he sees a "fugitive warning" in her eyes, which she lowers as she follows Zeena upstairs. Now that he is alone, Ethan finds that the house is too cold and reluctantly follows his wife to their room.

As the dancers pour out of the hall, Ethan shyly draws back out of their sight. Even when Mattie comes out and looks around for him, he does not come forward, although in general, her expressiveness and freedom spreads to him. Denis Eady approaches and asks Mattie if her "gentleman friend" has failed to turn up. He offers to take her for a ride in his father's cutter . Ethan still hangs back, wanting to know whether Mattie will accept Eady's offer. Mattie politely declines and sets off towards home on foot. Ethan is happy that Mattie has not gone with Denis Eady. He catches up with her under the Varnums' spruce trees and asks her why, if she thought he hadn't come, she didn't go with Denis. Surprised that he knows about Denis's invitation, she laughs delightedly at his sudden appearance. They link arms and walk home together. On the way, they look at the "coasting" slope, where people go sledding. He tells her that they can go sledding the following night if there is a moon. She says that Ned Hale and Ruth Varnum, a young engaged couple, had gone sledding and had nearly collided with the big elm tree at the bottom of the slope. She and the others present thought they had been killed. Ethan points out that Ned is no good at steering, whereas he himself could take her down safely. Ethan wants to know Mattie's feelings about Denis Eady, but cannot ask her directly. Instead, he comments that it is natural that she should leave his household . Mattie fears that he really means that Zeena is dissatisfied with her work and is planning to fire her. Mattie says she wishes Zeena would openly tell her what is wrong with her work, so that she can learn to do better. She wonders if Ethan also wishes her to go. Though this is far from Ethan's intentions, he cannot tell her his feelings. He only tells Mattie that he and Zeena mean for her never to leave. He muses silently that his dead ancestors who failed to get away and were buried on the farm will conspire with him to keep Mattie there. As they approach the house, he notices the dead vine hanging from the porch like one of the crepe streamers that were traditionally displayed by the door of a house in mourning. He wonders what would happen if it were there to mark Zeena's death. Zeena usually leaves a key under the doormat for them when they come home late from the village, but tonight, Ethan cannot find it. He has a wild momentary fantasy that tramps may have been there - his unspoken implication being that they may have killed Zeena. While he is on his knees looking for the key, the door opens and he sees his wife. Zeena explains that she felt too ill to sleep. She holds up a lamp to light their way into the house and up the stairs. Ethan is reluctant to let Mattie see him follow Zeena into their bedroom, and says he will stay downstairs to do his accounts. Zeena points out that it is too cold. Ethan fancies that he sees a look of warning flash across Mattie's face. He agrees with Zeena and obediently follows her upstairs.

. During their walk home from the dance, Ethan muses on the possibility of being with Mattie forever on the farm. He feels that all the dead Frome ancestors who failed to get away and were buried on the farm will conspire with him to keep Mattie there. It is a sinister image when applied to the lively Mattie, suggesting that the repression and death that marks Ethan's life will overtake her and imprison her. Because we know from the Author's Introductory Note that Ethan ends up crippled, the conversation between him and Mattie at the coasting slope about Ned Hale and Ruth Varnum's narrow escape from death appears to be a foreshadowing of their own fate. This lends the entire story the weight of foreboding and a tragic inevitability. Zeena's failure to leave a key for Ethan and Mattie and her waiting up for them is another suggestion that she intuits that something illicit is going on between them. Zeena blames her illness for the fact that she is still up, another example of how she uses her status as an invalid to manipulate and retain control over others. The contrast between Zeena and Mattie is reinforced by the descriptions of Zeena's gaunt face, puckered throat, flat breast and projecting bones, as against Mattie's fresh and rosy-cheeked beauty. As far as character is concerned, Zeena is portrayed as a complaining old crone, sharp-eyed and mean-tongued, and with one foot firmly planted in the grave, whereas Mattie is vigorous, beautiful and delights in life. Ethan is caught between the two worlds of life and death: in love with the vital Mattie, but married to the deathly Zeena. He retains enough vitality himself to be invigorated by Mattie's company and dreams of escaping his dead marriage to live with her. But it is hardly a hopeful sign that one of the ways he sees this happening, in his romantic fantasies, is for his dead ancestors to join with him in keeping Mattie on the farm. Instead of embracing life with Mattie, he dreams of their being embraced by death. Zeena's dominance over her husband is shown symbolically by her tall figure towering above him in the doorway as he scrabbles about on his knees looking for the key. Psychologically, it is shown by his ready acquiescence to her view that it is too cold for him to stay downstairs and do his accounts.


At the kitchen door Daniel Byrne sat in his sleigh behind a big-boned
grey who pawed the snow and swung his long head restlessly from side to
side.

Ethan went into the kitchen and found his wife by the stove. Her head
was wrapped in her shawl, and she was reading a book called "Kidney
Troubles and Their Cure" on which he had had to pay extra postage only a
few days before.

Zeena did not move or look up when he entered, and after a moment he
asked: "Where's Mattie?"

Without lifting her eyes from the page she replied: "I presume she's
getting down her trunk."

The blood rushed to his face. "Getting down her trunk--alone?"

"Jotham Powell's down in the wood-lot, and Dan'l Byrne says he darsn't
leave that horse," she returned.

Her husband, without stopping to hear the end of the phrase, had left
the kitchen and sprung up the stairs. The door of Mattie's room was
shut, and he wavered a moment on the landing. "Matt," he said in a low
voice; but there was no answer, and he put his hand on the door-knob.

He had never been in her room except once, in the early summer, when
he had gone there to plaster up a leak in the eaves, but he remembered
exactly how everything had looked: the red-and-white quilt on her narrow
bed, the pretty pin-cushion on the chest of drawers, and over it the
enlarged photograph of her mother, in an oxydized frame, with a bunch of
dyed grasses at the back. Now these and all other tokens of her presence
had vanished, and the room looked as bare and comfortless as when Zeena
had shown her into it on the day of her arrival. In the middle of the
floor stood her trunk, and on the trunk she sat in her Sunday dress,
her back turned to the door and her face in her hands. She had not heard
Ethan's call because she was sobbing and she did not hear his step till
he stood close behind her and laid his hands on her shoulders.

"Matt--oh, don't--oh, Matt!"

She started up, lifting her wet face to his. "Ethan--I thought I wasn't
ever going to see you again!"

He took her in his arms, pressing her close, and with a trembling hand
smoothed away the hair from her forehead.

"Not see me again? What do you mean?"

She sobbed out: "Jotham said you told him we wasn't to wait dinner for
you, and I thought--"

"You thought I meant to cut it?" he finished for her grimly.

She clung to him without answering, and he laid his lips on her hair,
which was soft yet springy, like certain mosses on warm slopes, and had
the faint woody fragrance of fresh sawdust in the sun.

Through the door they heard Zeena's voice calling out from below: "Dan'l
Byrne says you better hurry up if you want him to take that trunk."

They drew apart with stricken faces. Words of resistance rushed to
Ethan's lips and died there. Mattie found her handkerchief and dried her
eyes; then, bending down, she took hold of a handle of the trunk.

Ethan put her aside. "You let go, Matt," he ordered her.

She answered: "It takes two to coax it round the corner"; and submitting
to this argument he grasped the other handle, and together they
manoeuvred the heavy trunk out to the landing.

"Now let go," he repeated; then he shouldered the trunk and carried it
down the stairs and across the passage to the kitchen. Zeena, who had
gone back to her seat by the stove, did not lift her head from her book
as he passed. Mattie followed him out of the door and helped him to lift
the trunk into the back of the sleigh. When it was in place they stood
side by side on the door-step, watching Daniel Byrne plunge off behind
his fidgety horse.

It seemed to Ethan that his heart was bound with cords which an unseen
hand was tightening with every tick of the clock. Twice he opened his
lips to speak to Mattie and found no breath. At length, as she turned to
re-enter the house, he laid a detaining hand on her.

"I'm going to drive you over, Matt," he whispered.

She murmured back: "I think Zeena wants I should go with Jotham."

"I'm going to drive you over," he repeated; and she went into the
kitchen without answering.

At dinner Ethan could not eat. If he lifted his eyes they rested on
Zeena's pinched face, and the corners of her straight lips seemed to
quiver away into a smile. She ate well, declaring that the mild weather
made her feel better, and pressed a second helping of beans on Jotham
Powell, whose wants she generally ignored.

Mattie, when the meal was over, went about her usual task of clearing
the table and washing up the dishes. Zeena, after feeding the cat,
had returned to her rocking-chair by the stove, and Jotham Powell, who
always lingered last, reluctantly pushed back his chair and moved toward
the door.

On the threshold he turned back to say to Ethan: "What time'll I come
round for Mattie?"

Ethan was standing near the window, mechanically filling his pipe while
he watched Mattie move to and fro. He answered: "You needn't come round;
I'm going to drive her over myself."

He saw the rise of the colour in Mattie's averted cheek, and the quick
lifting of Zeena's head.

"I want you should stay here this afternoon, Ethan," his wife said.
"Jotham can drive Mattie over."

Mattie flung an imploring glance at him, but he repeated curtly: "I'm
going to drive her over myself."

Zeena continued in the same even tone: "I wanted you should stay and fix
up that stove in Mattie's room afore the girl gets here. It ain't been
drawing right for nigh on a month now."

Ethan's voice rose indignantly. "If it was good enough for Mattie I
guess it's good enough for a hired girl."

"That girl that's coming told me she was used to a house where they had
a furnace," Zeena persisted with the same monotonous mildness.

"She'd better ha' stayed there then," he flung back at her; and turning
to Mattie he added in a hard voice: "You be ready by three, Matt; I've
got business at Corbury."

Jotham Powell had started for the barn, and Ethan strode down after him
aflame with anger. The pulses in his temples throbbed and a fog was in
his eyes. He went about his task without knowing what force directed
him, or whose hands and feet were fulfilling its orders. It was not till
he led out the sorrel and backed him between the shafts of the sleigh
that he once more became conscious of what he was doing. As he passed
the bridle over the horse's head, and wound the traces around the
shafts, he remembered the day when he had made the same preparations
in order to drive over and meet his wife's cousin at the Flats. It
was little more than a year ago, on just such a soft afternoon, with a
"feel" of spring in the air. The sorrel, turning the same big ringed eye
on him, nuzzled the palm of his hand in the same way; and one by one all
the days between rose up and stood before him...

He flung the bearskin into the sleigh, climbed to the seat, and drove up
to the house. When he entered the kitchen it was empty, but Mattie's bag
and shawl lay ready by the door. He went to the foot of the stairs and
listened. No sound reached him from above, but presently he thought he
heard some one moving about in his deserted study, and pushing open the
door he saw Mattie, in her hat and jacket, standing with her back to him
near the table.

She started at his approach and turning quickly, said: "Is it time?"

"What are you doing here, Matt?" he asked her.

She looked at him timidly. "I was just taking a look round--that's all,"
she answered, with a wavering smile.

They went back into the kitchen without speaking, and Ethan picked up
her bag and shawl.

"Where's Zeena?" he asked.

"She went upstairs right after dinner. She said she had those shooting
pains again, and didn't want to be disturbed."

"Didn't she say good-bye to you?"

"No. That was all she said."

Ethan, looking slowly about the kitchen, said to himself with a shudder
that in a few hours he would be returning to it alone. Then the sense
of unreality overcame him once more, and he could not bring himself to
believe that Mattie stood there for the last time before him.

"Come on," he said almost gaily, opening the door and putting her bag
into the sleigh. He sprang to his seat and bent over to tuck the rug
about her as she slipped into the place at his side. "Now then, go
'long," he said, with a shake of the reins that sent the sorrel placidly
jogging down the hill.

"We got lots of time for a good ride, Matt!" he cried, seeking her hand
beneath the fur and pressing it in his. His face tingled and he felt
dizzy, as if he had stopped in at the Starkfield saloon on a zero day
for a drink.

At the gate, instead of making for Starkfield, he turned the sorrel to
the right, up the Bettsbridge road. Mattie sat silent, giving no sign
of surprise; but after a moment she said: "Are you going round by Shadow
Pond?"

He laughed and answered: "I knew you'd know!"

She drew closer under the bearskin, so that, looking sideways around his
coat-sleeve, he could just catch the tip of her nose and a blown brown
wave of hair. They drove slowly up the road between fields glistening
under the pale sun, and then bent to the right down a lane edged with
spruce and larch. Ahead of them, a long way off, a range of hills
stained by mottlings of black forest flowed away in round white curves
against the sky. The lane passed into a pine-wood with boles reddening
in the afternoon sun and delicate blue shadows on the snow. As they
entered it the breeze fell and a warm stillness seemed to drop from the
branches with the dropping needles. Here the snow was so pure that the
tiny tracks of wood-animals had left on it intricate lace-like patterns,
and the bluish cones caught in its surface stood out like ornaments of
bronze.

Ethan drove on in silence till they reached a part of the wood where the
pines were more widely spaced; then he drew up and helped Mattie to get
out of the sleigh. They passed between the aromatic trunks, the snow
breaking crisply under their feet, till they came to a small sheet
of water with steep wooded sides. Across its frozen surface, from the
farther bank, a single hill rising against the western sun threw the
long conical shadow which gave the lake its name. It was a shy secret
spot, full of the same dumb melancholy that Ethan felt in his heart.

He looked up and down the little pebbly beach till his eye lit on a
fallen tree-trunk half submerged in snow.

"There's where we sat at the picnic," he reminded her.

The entertainment of which he spoke was one of the few that they had
taken part in together: a "church picnic" which, on a long afternoon of
the preceding summer, had filled the retired place with merry-making.
Mattie had begged him to go with her but he had refused. Then, toward
sunset, coming down from the mountain where he had been felling timber,
he had been caught by some strayed revellers and drawn into the group by
the lake, where Mattie, encircled by facetious youths, and bright as
a blackberry under her spreading hat, was brewing coffee over a gipsy
fire. He remembered the shyness he had felt at approaching her in his
uncouth clothes, and then the lighting up of her face, and the way she
had broken through the group to come to him with a cup in her hand. They
had sat for a few minutes on the fallen log by the pond, and she had
missed her gold locket, and set the young men searching for it; and it
was Ethan who had spied it in the moss.... That was all; but all their
intercourse had been made up of just such inarticulate flashes, when
they seemed to come suddenly upon happiness as if they had surprised a
butterfly in the winter woods...

"It was right there I found your locket," he said, pushing his foot into
a dense tuft of blueberry bushes.

"I never saw anybody with such sharp eyes!" she answered.

She sat down on the tree-trunk in the sun and he sat down beside her.

"You were as pretty as a picture in that pink hat," he said.

She laughed with pleasure. "Oh, I guess it was the hat!" she rejoined.

They had never before avowed their inclination so openly, and Ethan, for
a moment, had the illusion that he was a free man, wooing the girl he
meant to marry. He looked at her hair and longed to touch it again, and
to tell her that it smelt of the woods; but he had never learned to say
such things.

Suddenly she rose to her feet and said: "We mustn't stay here any
longer."

He continued to gaze at her vaguely, only half-roused from his dream.
"There's plenty of time," he answered.

They stood looking at each other as if the eyes of each were straining
to absorb and hold fast the other's image. There were things he had to
say to her before they parted, but he could not say them in that place
of summer memories, and he turned and followed her in silence to
the sleigh. As they drove away the sun sank behind the hill and the
pine-boles turned from red to grey.

By a devious track between the fields they wound back to the Starkfield
road. Under the open sky the light was still clear, with a reflection of
cold red on the eastern hills. The clumps of trees in the snow seemed to
draw together in ruffled lumps, like birds with their heads under their
wings; and the sky, as it paled, rose higher, leaving the earth more
alone.

As they turned into the Starkfield road Ethan said: "Matt, what do you
mean to do?"

She did not answer at once, but at length she said: "I'll try to get a
place in a store."

"You know you can't do it. The bad air and the standing all day nearly
killed you before."

"I'm a lot stronger than I was before I came to Starkfield."

"And now you're going to throw away all the good it's done you!"

There seemed to be no answer to this, and again they drove on for a
while without speaking. With every yard of the way some spot where they
had stood, and laughed together or been silent, clutched at Ethan and
dragged him back.

"Isn't there any of your father's folks could help you?"

"There isn't any of 'em I'd ask."

He lowered his voice to say: "You know there's nothing I wouldn't do for
you if I could."

"I know there isn't."

"But I can't--"

She was silent, but he felt a slight tremor in the shoulder against his.

"Oh, Matt," he broke out, "if I could ha' gone with you now I'd ha' done
it--"

She turned to him, pulling a scrap of paper from her breast. "Ethan--I
found this," she stammered. Even in the failing light he saw it was the
letter to his wife that he had begun the night before and forgotten
to destroy. Through his astonishment there ran a fierce thrill of joy.
"Matt--" he cried; "if I could ha' done it, would you?"

"Oh, Ethan, Ethan--what's the use?" With a sudden movement she tore the
letter in shreds and sent them fluttering off into the snow.

"Tell me, Matt! Tell me!" he adjured her.

She was silent for a moment; then she said, in such a low tone that he
had to stoop his head to hear her: "I used to think of it sometimes,
summer nights when the moon was so bright. I couldn't sleep."

His heart reeled with the sweetness of it. "As long ago as that?"

She answered, as if the date had long been fixed for her: "The first
time was at Shadow Pond."

"Was that why you gave me my coffee before the others?"

"I don't know. Did I? I was dreadfully put out when you wouldn't go to
the picnic with me; and then, when I saw you coming down the road, I
thought maybe you'd gone home that way o' purpose; and that made me
glad."

They were silent again. They had reached the point where the road
dipped to the hollow by Ethan's mill and as they descended the darkness
descended with them, dropping down like a black veil from the heavy
hemlock boughs.

"I'm tied hand and foot, Matt. There isn't a thing I can do," he began
again.

"You must write to me sometimes, Ethan."

"Oh, what good'll writing do? I want to put my hand out and touch you. I
want to do for you and care for you. I want to be there when you're sick
and when you're lonesome."

"You mustn't think but what I'll do all right."

"You won't need me, you mean? I suppose you'll marry!"

"Oh, Ethan!" she cried.

"I don't know how it is you make me feel, Matt. I'd a'most rather have
you dead than that!"

"Oh, I wish I was, I wish I was!" she sobbed.

The sound of her weeping shook him out of his dark anger, and he felt
ashamed.

"Don't let's talk that way," he whispered.

"Why shouldn't we, when it's true? I've been wishing it every minute of
the day."

"Matt! You be quiet! Don't you say it."

"There's never anybody been good to me but you."

"Don't say that either, when I can't lift a hand for you!"

"Yes; but it's true just the same."

They had reached the top of School House Hill and Starkfield lay below
them in the twilight. A cutter, mounting the road from the village,
passed them by in a joyous flutter of bells, and they straightened
themselves and looked ahead with rigid faces. Along the main street
lights had begun to shine from the house-fronts and stray figures were
turning in here and there at the gates. Ethan, with a touch of his whip,
roused the sorrel to a languid trot.

As they drew near the end of the village the cries of children reached
them, and they saw a knot of boys, with sleds behind them, scattering
across the open space before the church.

"I guess this'll be their last coast for a day or two," Ethan said,
looking up at the mild sky.

Mattie was silent, and he added: "We were to have gone down last night."

Still she did not speak and, prompted by an obscure desire to
help himself and her through their miserable last hour, he went on
discursively: "Ain't it funny we haven't been down together but just
that once last winter?"

She answered: "It wasn't often I got down to the village."

"That's so," he said.

They had reached the crest of the Corbury road, and between the
indistinct white glimmer of the church and the black curtain of the
Varnum spruces the slope stretched away below them without a sled on its
length. Some erratic impulse prompted Ethan to say: "How'd you like me
to take you down now?"

She forced a laugh. "Why, there isn't time!"

"There's all the time we want. Come along!" His one desire now was to
postpone the moment of turning the sorrel toward the Flats.

"But the girl," she faltered. "The girl'll be waiting at the station."

"Well, let her wait. You'd have to if she didn't. Come!"

The note of authority in his voice seemed to subdue her, and when he
had jumped from the sleigh she let him help her out, saying only, with a
vague feint of reluctance: "But there isn't a sled round anywheres."

"Yes, there is! Right over there under the spruces." He threw the
bearskin over the sorrel, who stood passively by the roadside, hanging
a meditative head. Then he caught Mattie's hand and drew her after him
toward the sled.

She seated herself obediently and he took his place behind her, so close
that her hair brushed his face. "All right, Matt?" he called out, as if
the width of the road had been between them.

She turned her head to say: "It's dreadfully dark. Are you sure you can
see?"

He laughed contemptuously: "I could go down this coast with my
eyes tied!" and she laughed with him, as if she liked his audacity.
Nevertheless he sat still a moment, straining his eyes down the long
hill, for it was the most confusing hour of the evening, the hour when
the last clearness from the upper sky is merged with the rising night in
a blur that disguises landmarks and falsifies distances.

"Now!" he cried.

The sled started with a bound, and they flew on through the dusk,
gathering smoothness and speed as they went, with the hollow night
opening out below them and the air singing by like an organ. Mattie sat
perfectly still, but as they reached the bend at the foot of the hill,
where the big elm thrust out a deadly elbow, he fancied that she shrank
a little closer.

"Don't be scared, Matt!" he cried exultantly, as they spun safely past
it and flew down the second slope; and when they reached the level
ground beyond, and the speed of the sled began to slacken, he heard her
give a little laugh of glee.

They sprang off and started to walk back up the hill. Ethan dragged the
sled with one hand and passed the other through Mattie's arm.

"Were you scared I'd run you into the elm?" he asked with a boyish
laugh.

"I told you I was never scared with you," she answered.

The strange exaltation of his mood had brought on one of his rare fits
of boastfulness. "It is a tricky place, though. The least swerve,
and we'd never ha' come up again. But I can measure distances to a
hair's-breadth--always could."

She murmured: "I always say you've got the surest eye..."

Deep silence had fallen with the starless dusk, and they leaned on each
other without speaking; but at every step of their climb Ethan said to
himself: "It's the last time we'll ever walk together."

They mounted slowly to the top of the hill. When they were abreast of
the church he stooped his head to her to ask: "Are you tired?" and she
answered, breathing quickly: "It was splendid!"

With a pressure of his arm he guided her toward the Norway spruces. "I
guess this sled must be Ned Hale's. Anyhow I'll leave it where I found
it." He drew the sled up to the Varnum gate and rested it against the
fence. As he raised himself he suddenly felt Mattie close to him among
the shadows.

"Is this where Ned and Ruth kissed each other?" she whispered
breathlessly, and flung her arms about him. Her lips, groping for his,
swept over his face, and he held her fast in a rapture of surprise.

"Good-bye-good-bye," she stammered, and kissed him again.

"Oh, Matt, I can't let you go!" broke from him in the same old cry.

She freed herself from his hold and he heard her sobbing. "Oh, I can't
go either!" she wailed.

"Matt! What'll we do? What'll we do?"

They clung to each other's hands like children, and her body shook with
desperate sobs.

Through the stillness they heard the church clock striking five.

"Oh, Ethan, it's time!" she cried.

He drew her back to him. "Time for what? You don't suppose I'm going to
leave you now?"

"If I missed my train where'd I go?"

"Where are you going if you catch it?"

She stood silent, her hands lying cold and relaxed in his.

"What's the good of either of us going anywheres without the other one
now?" he said.

She remained motionless, as if she had not heard him. Then she snatched
her hands from his, threw her arms about his neck, and pressed a sudden
drenched cheek against his face. "Ethan! Ethan! I want you to take me
down again!"

"Down where?"

"The coast. Right off," she panted. "So 't we'll never come up any
more."

"Matt! What on earth do you mean?"

She put her lips close against his ear to say: "Right into the big elm.
You said you could. So 't we'd never have to leave each other any more."

"Why, what are you talking of? You're crazy!"

"I'm not crazy; but I will be if I leave you."

"Oh, Matt, Matt--" he groaned.

She tightened her fierce hold about his neck. Her face lay close to his
face.

"Ethan, where'll I go if I leave you? I don't know how to get along
alone. You said so yourself just now. Nobody but you was ever good to
me. And there'll be that strange girl in the house... and she'll sleep
in my bed, where I used to lay nights and listen to hear you come up the
stairs..."

The words were like fragments torn from his heart. With them came the
hated vision of the house he was going back to--of the stairs he would
have to go up every night, of the woman who would wait for him there.
And the sweetness of Mattie's avowal, the wild wonder of knowing at
last that all that had happened to him had happened to her too, made the
other vision more abhorrent, the other life more intolerable to return
to...

Her pleadings still came to him between short sobs, but he no longer
heard what she was saying. Her hat had slipped back and he was stroking
her hair. He wanted to get the feeling of it into his hand, so that it
would sleep there like a seed in winter. Once he found her mouth again,
and they seemed to be by the pond together in the burning August sun.
But his cheek touched hers, and it was cold and full of weeping, and he
saw the road to the Flats under the night and heard the whistle of the
train up the line.

The spruces swathed them in blackness and silence. They might have been
in their coffins underground. He said to himself: "Perhaps it'll feel
like this..." and then again: "After this I sha'n't feel anything..."

Suddenly he heard the old sorrel whinny across the road, and thought:
"He's wondering why he doesn't get his supper..."

"Come!" Mattie whispered, tugging at his hand.

Her sombre violence constrained him: she seemed the embodied instrument
of fate. He pulled the sled out, blinking like a night-bird as he passed
from the shade of the spruces into the transparent dusk of the open. The
slope below them was deserted. All Starkfield was at supper, and not a
figure crossed the open space before the church. The sky, swollen with
the clouds that announce a thaw, hung as low as before a summer storm.
He strained his eyes through the dimness, and they seemed less keen,
less capable than usual.

He took his seat on the sled and Mattie instantly placed herself in
front of him. Her hat had fallen into the snow and his lips were in her
hair. He stretched out his legs, drove his heels into the road to keep
the sled from slipping forward, and bent her head back between his
hands. Then suddenly he sprang up again.

"Get up," he ordered her.

It was the tone she always heeded, but she cowered down in her seat,
repeating vehemently: "No, no, no!"

"Get up!"

"Why?"

"I want to sit in front."

"No, no! How can you steer in front?"

"I don't have to. We'll follow the track."

They spoke in smothered whispers, as though the night were listening.

"Get up! Get up!" he urged her; but she kept on repeating: "Why do you
want to sit in front?"

"Because I--because I want to feel you holding me," he stammered, and
dragged her to her feet.

The answer seemed to satisfy her, or else she yielded to the power of
his voice. He bent down, feeling in the obscurity for the glassy slide
worn by preceding coasters, and placed the runners carefully between its
edges. She waited while he seated himself with crossed legs in the front
of the sled; then she crouched quickly down at his back and clasped her
arms about him. Her breath in his neck set him shuddering again, and
he almost sprang from his seat. But in a flash he remembered the
alternative. She was right: this was better than parting. He leaned back
and drew her mouth to his...

Just as they started he heard the sorrel's whinny again, and the
familiar wistful call, and all the confused images it brought with it,
went with him down the first reach of the road. Half-way down there
was a sudden drop, then a rise, and after that another long delirious
descent. As they took wing for this it seemed to him that they were
flying indeed, flying far up into the cloudy night, with Starkfield
immeasurably below them, falling away like a speck in space... Then the
big elm shot up ahead, lying in wait for them at the bend of the road,
and he said between his teeth: "We can fetch it; I know we can fetch
it--"

As they flew toward the tree Mattie pressed her arms tighter, and her
blood seemed to be in his veins. Once or twice the sled swerved a little
under them. He slanted his body to keep it headed for the elm, repeating
to himself again and again: "I know we can fetch it"; and little phrases
she had spoken ran through his head and danced before him on the air.
The big tree loomed bigger and closer, and as they bore down on it
he thought: "It's waiting for us: it seems to know." But suddenly his
wife's face, with twisted monstrous lineaments, thrust itself between
him and his goal, and he made an instinctive movement to brush it aside.
The sled swerved in response, but he righted it again, kept it straight,
and drove down on the black projecting mass. There was a last instant
when the air shot past him like millions of fiery wires; and then the
elm...

The sky was still thick, but looking straight up he saw a single star,
and tried vaguely to reckon whether it were Sirius, or--or--The effort
tired him too much, and he closed his heavy lids and thought that he
would sleep... The stillness was so profound that he heard a little
animal twittering somewhere near by under the snow. It made a small
frightened cheep like a field mouse, and he wondered languidly if
it were hurt. Then he understood that it must be in pain: pain so
excruciating that he seemed, mysteriously, to feel it shooting through
his own body. He tried in vain to roll over in the direction of the
sound, and stretched his left arm out across the snow. And now it was as
though he felt rather than heard the twittering; it seemed to be under
his palm, which rested on something soft and springy. The thought of
the animal's suffering was intolerable to him and he struggled to raise
himself, and could not because a rock, or some huge mass, seemed to be
lying on him. But he continued to finger about cautiously with his left
hand, thinking he might get hold of the little creature and help it; and
all at once he knew that the soft thing he had touched was Mattie's hair
and that his hand was on her face.

He dragged himself to his knees, the monstrous load on him moving with
him as he moved, and his hand went over and over her face, and he felt
that the twittering came from her lips...

He got his face down close to hers, with his ear to her mouth, and in
the darkness he saw her eyes open and heard her say his name.

"Oh, Matt, I thought we'd fetched it," he moaned; and far off, up the
hill, he heard the sorrel whinny, and thought: "I ought to be getting
him his feed..."

*****

THE QUERULOUS DRONE ceased as I entered Frome's kitchen, and of the two
women sitting there I could not tell which had been the speaker.

One of them, on my appearing, raised her tall bony figure from her seat,
not as if to welcome me--for she threw me no more than a brief glance
of surprise--but simply to set about preparing the meal which Frome's
absence had delayed. A slatternly calico wrapper hung from her shoulders
and the wisps of her thin grey hair were drawn away from a high forehead
and fastened at the back by a broken comb. She had pale opaque eyes
which revealed nothing and reflected nothing, and her narrow lips were
of the same sallow colour as her face.

The other woman was much smaller and slighter. She sat huddled in an
arm-chair near the stove, and when I came in she turned her head quickly
toward me, without the least corresponding movement of her body.
Her hair was as grey as her companion's, her face as bloodless and
shrivelled, but amber-tinted, with swarthy shadows sharpening the nose
and hollowing the temples. Under her shapeless dress her body kept its
limp immobility, and her dark eyes had the bright witch-like stare that
disease of the spine sometimes gives.

Even for that part of the country the kitchen was a poor-looking place.
With the exception of the dark-eyed woman's chair, which looked like a
soiled relic of luxury bought at a country auction, the furniture was of
the roughest kind. Three coarse china plates and a broken-nosed milk-jug
had been set on a greasy table scored with knife-cuts, and a couple
of straw-bottomed chairs and a kitchen dresser of unpainted pine stood
meagrely against the plaster walls.

"My, it's cold here! The fire must be 'most out," Frome said, glancing
about him apologetically as he followed me in.

The tall woman, who had moved away from us toward the dresser, took no
notice; but the other, from her cushioned niche, answered complainingly,
in a high thin voice. "It's on'y just been made up this very minute.
Zeena fell asleep and slep' ever so long, and I thought I'd be frozen
stiff before I could wake her up and get her to 'tend to it."

I knew then that it was she who had been speaking when we entered.

Her companion, who was just coming back to the table with the remains
of a cold mince-pie in a battered pie-dish, set down her unappetising
burden without appearing to hear the accusation brought against her.

Frome stood hesitatingly before her as she advanced; then he looked at
me and said: "This is my wife, Mis' Frome." After another interval he
added, turning toward the figure in the arm-chair: "And this is Miss
Mattie Silver..."

*****

Mrs. Hale, tender soul, had pictured me as lost in the Flats and buried
under a snow-drift; and so lively was her satisfaction on seeing me
safely restored to her the next morning that I felt my peril had caused
me to advance several degrees in her favour.

Great was her amazement, and that of old Mrs. Varnum, on learning that
Ethan Frome's old horse had carried me to and from Corbury Junction
through the worst blizzard of the winter; greater still their surprise
when they heard that his master had taken me in for the night.

Beneath their wondering exclamations I felt a secret curiosity to know
what impressions I had received from my night in the Frome household,
and divined that the best way of breaking down their reserve was to let
them try to penetrate mine. I therefore confined myself to saying, in a
matter-of-fact tone, that I had been received with great kindness, and
that Frome had made a bed for me in a room on the ground-floor which
seemed in happier days to have been fitted up as a kind of writing-room
or study.

"Well," Mrs. Hale mused, "in such a storm I suppose he felt he couldn't
do less than take you in--but I guess it went hard with Ethan. I don't
believe but what you're the only stranger has set foot in that house for
over twenty years. He's that proud he don't even like his oldest friends
to go there; and I don't know as any do, any more, except myself and the
doctor..."

"You still go there, Mrs. Hale?" I ventured.

"I used to go a good deal after the accident, when I was first married;
but after awhile I got to think it made 'em feel worse to see us. And
then one thing and another came, and my own troubles... But I generally
make out to drive over there round about New Year's, and once in the
summer. Only I always try to pick a day when Ethan's off somewheres.
It's bad enough to see the two women sitting there--but his face, when he
looks round that bare place, just kills me... You see, I can look back
and call it up in his mother's day, before their troubles."

Old Mrs. Varnum, by this time, had gone up to bed, and her daughter
and I were sitting alone, after supper, in the austere seclusion of
the horse-hair parlour. Mrs. Hale glanced at me tentatively, as though
trying to see how much footing my conjectures gave her; and I guessed
that if she had kept silence till now it was because she had been
waiting, through all the years, for some one who should see what she
alone had seen.

I waited to let her trust in me gather strength before I said: "Yes,
it's pretty bad, seeing all three of them there together."

She drew her mild brows into a frown of pain. "It was just awful from
the beginning. I was here in the house when they were carried up--they
laid Mattie Silver in the room you're in. She and I were great friends,
and she was to have been my bridesmaid in the spring... When she came
to I went up to her and stayed all night. They gave her things to quiet
her, and she didn't know much till to'rd morning, and then all of a
sudden she woke up just like herself, and looked straight at me out
of her big eyes, and said... Oh, I don't know why I'm telling you all
this," Mrs. Hale broke off, crying.

She took off her spectacles, wiped the moisture from them, and put them
on again with an unsteady hand. "It got about the next day," she went
on, "that Zeena Frome had sent Mattie off in a hurry because she had a
hired girl coming, and the folks here could never rightly tell what she
and Ethan were doing that night coasting, when they'd ought to have been
on their way to the Flats to ketch the train... I never knew myself
what Zeena thought--I don't to this day. Nobody knows Zeena's thoughts.
Anyhow, when she heard o' the accident she came right in and stayed with
Ethan over to the minister's, where they'd carried him. And as soon as
the doctors said that Mattie could be moved, Zeena sent for her and took
her back to the farm."

"And there she's been ever since?"

Mrs. Hale answered simply: "There was nowhere else for her to go;" and
my heart tightened at the thought of the hard compulsions of the poor.

"Yes, there she's been," Mrs. Hale continued, "and Zeena's done for her,
and done for Ethan, as good as she could. It was a miracle, considering
how sick she was--but she seemed to be raised right up just when the call
came to her. Not as she's ever given up doctoring, and she's had sick
spells right along; but she's had the strength given her to care for
those two for over twenty years, and before the accident came she
thought she couldn't even care for herself."

Mrs. Hale paused a moment, and I remained silent, plunged in the vision
of what her words evoked. "It's horrible for them all," I murmured.

"Yes: it's pretty bad. And they ain't any of 'em easy people either.
Mattie was, before the accident; I never knew a sweeter nature. But
she's suffered too much--that's what I always say when folks tell me how
she's soured. And Zeena, she was always cranky. Not but what she bears
with Mattie wonderful--I've seen that myself. But sometimes the two
of them get going at each other, and then Ethan's face'd break your
heart... When I see that, I think it's him that suffers most... anyhow
it ain't Zeena, because she ain't got the time... It's a pity, though,"
Mrs. Hale ended, sighing, "that they're all shut up there'n that one
kitchen. In the summertime, on pleasant days, they move Mattie into
the parlour, or out in the door-yard, and that makes it easier... but
winters there's the fires to be thought of; and there ain't a dime to
spare up at the Fromes.'"

Mrs. Hale drew a deep breath, as though her memory were eased of its
long burden, and she had no more to say; but suddenly an impulse of
complete avowal seized her.

She took off her spectacles again, leaned toward me across the bead-work
table-cover, and went on with lowered voice: "There was one day, about
a week after the accident, when they all thought Mattie couldn't live.
Well, I say it's a pity she did. I said it right out to our minister
once, and he was shocked at me. Only he wasn't with me that morning
when she first came to... And I say, if she'd ha' died, Ethan might ha'
lived; and the way they are now, I don't see's there's much difference
between the Fromes up at the farm and the Fromes down in the graveyard;
'cept that down there they're all quiet, and the women have got to hold
their tongues."

Back in the kitchen, Ethan finds Zeena reading a book about kidney problems. Mattie apparently is moving her trunk. Appalled that she is moving the heavy thing without manly aid, Ethan jumps up to go help her. He finds her crying in her room. She thought that Ethan wasn't going to see her off. Zeena calls to them that it's time for Mattie to be headed on with her ride. Ethan whispers in Mattie's ear that he plans to drive her. Zeena tells him he can't, and he defies her. They fight but he has his way. In a fury he readies the horse and hitches it to the sleigh. Ethan finds Mattie in his study. Zeena has gone to bed without saying a word to Mattie. Smiling, Ethan tells Mattie they can enjoy their drive together. Ethan takes the scenic route, and heads to Shadow Pond, where Ethan and Mattie had once shared a picnic lunch together. She had asked him to a town picnic; he had refused, but later joined her. They try to drink in ever moment with each other, and Ethan tries to discuss her future. Again, her situation is really desperate. She has no one else who loves her in the world. Ethan breaks down, telling her that he had tried to find a way to run away with her but couldn't. Mattie shows him that she found the letter he started to write to Zeena. Begging, Ethan asks Mattie if she would have run away with him if he'd asked her to. She admits she's fantasized about the very thing, almost since the first time she met him. Mattie asks Ethan to write to her, but he thinks writing would be a terribly poor substitute for the real thing. He asks if she will get married. She tells him he's the only one for her. Soon they are near the sledding spot. It's dark, but they decide to take a sled before they go to the train station. After the successful sled, Mattie begs Ethan for another ride. This time, she doesn't want them to make it back up to the top of the hill. Ethan accuses her of insanity. She says that the real insanity will come if she is separated from Ethan. Her sobs are intense and Ethan hold her and touches her hair. They kiss. The power of her suggestion to sled to the death takes him over. His horse is crying hungrily in the distance but he beckons Mattie to the sled. Ethan sits in the back of the sled in the steering position, and Mattie sits in the front seat. Suddenly, Ethan has an idea and they switch seats. Mattie wraps her arms around him... Then woooooosh again, and then - They kiss. And then - they crash into the big elm tree. Ethan is trying to look at the stars. He's suddenly very tired. A small animal is making noise near him. Overwhelmed by a desire to ease the little animal's pain, he fumbles around in the snow until he feels something hair. It's hair. Mattie's hair. He realizes that Mattie is the little animal making noise. She says his name. He says her name back and tells her he though he had hit the elm, and that he needs to feed the horse... Now on to the Epilogue.

When Ethan arrives home, Daniel Byrne is at the door with his horse and sleigh, and Zeena is in the kitchen studying a book on kidney troubles. Ethan goes upstairs to help Mattie with her trunk. He has been in her room only once before, and now all the tokens of her presence are packed away. Mattie herself sits on the trunk, crying. Part of her concern is that she has been afraid she might never see Ethan again since he was not at home. Ethan insists on taking the trunk down himself, and Mattie helps lift it into the sleigh. Then Ethan promises to take Mattie to the train later in the day. At dinner, Zeena is cheerful and hungry. After eating, Ethan tells Jotham that he will take Mattie to the train himself. Zeena insists that Ethan stay and repair the stove for the hired girl, but Ethan angrily tells her he is taking Mattie. It is a tense moment, and Ethan is furious. As he goes to the barn to hitch up the horse, he remembers that a year earlier he went to the train to bring Mattie out to live with them. When Ethan returns to the house for Mattie, he finds her in his study. She explains that she is "taking a look around," as if to remember everything. Zeena does not bother to say good-bye, for she has already gone upstairs. Ethan is rather merry as they hop into the sleigh and take off. As he drives, he turns giddy, presses Mattie's hand, and heads off to Shadow Pond. Mattie draws close to him. The landscape around them is decorative and inviting, but they ride in silence until they come to their secret spot. They walk to the edge of the pond and reminisce about a picnic that had enjoyed here the summer. She had lost her gold locket in the grass, and Ethan had found it, a fact that pleased them both. Ethan remembers that Mattie wore a pink hat that day. The couple sits on a log and comes close to openly avowing their affection for one another. There are things Ethan wants to say to Mattie, but this place of summer memories does not seem the proper spot. They go back to the sleigh and talk on the way to town. Mattie says she will work in a store, she feels stronger that she did when she tried that sort of work before. She will not ask her father's folks to do anything for her. Ethan says he would do something if he could, but he cannot. Mattie grows silent. He turns to her as if to unburden himself when she pulls out the letter he had written to Zeena the night before. Ethan is thrilled and pained; he asks her, "If I could ha' done it, would you?" Mattie says it is useless and tears the letter to shreds. He asks again, and she says she used to think of it, in summer. As they pass the farm, Ethan remarks that he is tied down, and there is nothing he can do. She wants him to write to her; but he sees no use and adds she will soon marry. He says, however, that he would rather see her dead than married to someone else. She says she wishes she were dead. Mattie begins to weep, and Ethan feels ashamed for his words. She says that no one has been as kind to her as Ethan. He says that may be true for the past, but there is nothing he can do for her now. Ethan and Mattie arrive in town at twilight and see some boys sledding. Mattie remarks that they were to have gone sledding last night. By the church and Varnum spruces, there are no coasters, so Ethan suggests that they take a ride right then. The hired girl at the station can wait. The sudden authority in Ethan's voice again subdues Mattie, and she goes along. They find a sled, and though it is dark, Ethan insists that he knows the slope even with his eyes closed. They shoot down the hill, and Mattie winces as they pass the elm. They get up to climb the slope, and Ethan asks Mattie if she was scared that he would run her into the elm. She tells him that she is never scared with him. As they climb, Ethan becomes boastful of his steering abilities. At the top of the slope, he guides Mattie to the spruce trees where he found Ned and Ruth kissing. Mattie flings her arms around Ethan and they kiss. She says good- bye, and he says he cannot let her go. Then she sobs and says she cannot let him go either. Mattie suggests that they take the sled down the slope one more time. She wants to drive into the elm tree and die with Ethan; then they will never be parted. At first, Ethan says she is crazy, but Mattie draws out the picture of his future miserable life without her. Ethan is torn. He wants to grab up Mattie's hair as if they were by the pond in August, but it is cold and he hears the train and the horse whinnying up the hill. Mattie insists and his "instrument of fate." He gets the sled, and they climb on. He gets up again and insists that Mattie sit behind, not in front. She does not want to, but he says he wants her to hold him so she relents. He reconsiders and nearly changes his mind; but then he leans back to kiss Mattie as he hears the horse whinny again. They fly down the first descent, and then the second. As the elm quickly looms up in front of them, Mattie hugs Ethan. He tries to aim so they will hit the tree squarely and die quickly, but at the last moment, he remembers his wife's monstrous face and makes a movement to flick the image away. The sled swerves, but he moves it back into line with the elm. The air shoots past like "millions of fiery wires," and then they hit the elm. When Ethan opens his eyes, he is looking at the stars in the sky. He closes his eyes again. All is still, except he can hear a twittering animal near him. The animal is in pain, and he can't move towards it, for he feels weighted by a rock. He then realizes that the animal is Mattie and that the softness under his hand is her face. He drags himself to his knees and over to Mattie. She opens her eyes and says his name. He says he thought they would certainly die. Then he thinks that he hears the horse again and knows that he should go and feed it.

Notes In this chapter, Edith Wharton's use of landscape description is strikingly clear. When Ethan and Mattie head to the pond, the snowy scene around them is described in bright, decorative terms to match their mood in the sleigh. At the pond, the description grows a bit somber to meet the mood of their memory. As they ride to town and see the Varnum spruces, the descriptions take on a darkening quality to match the falling night and their falling hopes. By the time they ride down the slope for the final time, they are desperate, and Starkfield seems a "speck in space." In its place, the elm becomes the whole landscape, large and threatening, as they head straight for it. Mattie and Ethan are entirely caught up in their emotions, although Ethan seems to remain somewhat in the practical world as well. He hears his horse and knows he should be fed; he has sympathy with the hungry animal. He hears Mattie's arguments about suicide and knows they should be ignored; but he also has sympathy with the sad Mattie. After the accident, Mattie turns into a whimpering animal, foreshadowing what she will become; Ethan tries to comfort her. At the same time, he hears the horse calling to him, and the reader realizes Ethan will be called back to the farm. It is intentional that Edith Wharton gives no details about the accident, not wanting to be maudlin. It was an emotional decision made in a hurry; the accident also occurred in a flash. The only information given to the reader is that the accident has failed to accomplish its purpose; Ethan and Mattie are both still alive.

Ethan returns to the house to find that the sleigh has come to take Mattie's trunk to the station and that Zeena is in the kitchen reading a medical book. He asks where Mattie is, and Zeena replies that she is probably bringing down her trunk. Ethan goes up to Mattie's room and finds her sobbing on the bed. He lays his hands on her shoulders and she confesses that she feared she would never see him again. He takes her in his arms and lays his lips on her hair. Zeena calls for them to hurry and bring the trunk. They lift the trunk into the sleigh. He tells Mattie that he will drive her to the train, in spite of Zeena's wish that Jotham should take her. At dinner, Ethan cannot eat. Zeena eats heartily, and once again there is a smile on her face. Jotham asks Ethan what time he should come for Mattie. Ethan tells him not to bother, as he will drive her. Zeena protests, on the grounds that Ethan needs to mend the stove in the spare room in time for the hired girl's arrival, but Ethan overrules her. Ethan harnesses the horse, remembering sadly the day he had made the same preparations in order to collect Mattie and bring her to the farm. When he returns to the house, he finds Mattie in his study, taking a last look around. She reports that Zeena, without saying goodbye, has gone upstairs suffering from shooting pains, and does not want to be disturbed. Ethan and Mattie get into the sleigh. Ethan drives off, taking a long way round, so tht they can pass Shadow Pond, a place that holds happy memories for them. When they arrive at a wood where they had a picnic, Ethan stops the sleigh and they walk around the area. They sit on a log, and Ethan reminds that this is the place where he found a gold locket she had lost. He longs to touch her and speak lovingly to her, but does not know how. She rises and suggests that they move on. Back on the road, Ethan asks Mattie about her plans. She says she will try to find work in a store. He reminds her that her health would not stand it. He tells her that he would do anything within his powers for her. She pulls out Ethan's note to Zeena, which he had abandoned and forgotten to destroy. Liberated by her broaching the subject of their being together, Ethan asks her if she would have agreed. But she declares that there is no point in thinking about it, tears up the note and throws it away. When he presses her, she admits that more than once, she had entertained the thought; the first time was at Shadow Pond. Ethan tells her regretfully that he cannot do a thing to help their situation. She tells him he must write to her. He believes that she will marry, and says he would rather she were dead. Sobbing, she agrees. Continuing on their journey, they come across a group of boys with sleds. Ethan reminds Mattie that they had intended to go sledding the previous night. Ethan suggests they should do it now. They find a spare sled under the Varnums' spruce trees, where he had caught up with her after the village dance . She sits in the sled and he takes his place behind her. She is worried that he will not be able to see properly in the fading light, but he boasts that he could go down the slope blindfolded. They go down the slope, and Ethan skilfully steers clear of the dangerous elm at the bottom. They walk back up the hill, and at the top, Mattie asks if this is where he caught Ned Hale and Ruth Varnum kissing. She flings her arms around him and kisses him passionately, bidding him farewell. He protests that he cannot let her go. They hear the church clock strike five, but agree that neither wants to go anywhere without the other. Then Mattie thinks of a plan that will ensure that they will never have to part. She asks Ethan to take her down the slope again and collide with the elm so that they die together. At first he dismisses the idea as crazy, but she points out that she does not want to leave him and is unable to manage on her own. Ethan thinks of the hated vision of the home and wife he is to return to, and the joy of knowing that Mattie felt about him the same way that he felt about her. Unable to tolerate going back home to Zeena, he and Mattie take their places on the sled and he sets it in motion. The sled only needs to follow the track to collide with the elm. As the big tree looms closer, he seems to see Zeena's twisted face thrust itself between him and his goal, and the sled glides off course. He rights it again, and they hit the elm. Ethan regains consciousness to a 'cheep' sound like a mouse in pain. Unable to tolerate the sound of a suffering animal, he feels around for the source of the sound. His hand finds Mattie's hair and face. He places his face close to hers, sees her eyes open, and hears her say his name. Then he hears his horse whinny, and remembers that he will need to be fed.

. The mood of this chapter is one of mounting despair and an unescapable fate, which Ethan feels powerless to alter: "It seemed to Ethan that his heart was bound with cords which an unseen hand was tightening with every tick of the clock." This conviction of being bound, of course, absolves Ethan of responsibility for his fate. He is incapable of making a decision and following it through into action. Instead, he constantly defers to external factors and blames them for the lack of fulfilment in his life, whether they be the climate, his marriage to Zeena and the accompanying social conventions, fate, or his financial difficulties. His decision not to ask the Hales for money for a second time can be put down to moral scruples. Some would say that moral scruples are an internal rather than an external factor, but the fact that they arise at all in this instance is due not to the ethical force of Ethan's inner nature, but to a chance meeting with Mrs Hale and the words she chanced to utter. Then Ethan had two options as to how he would act on her words, and chose the option of helpless resignation to his married fate. His sense of duty to Zeena, in turn, is forged by external conventions  rather than heartfelt devotion to her or even a sense of her deserving ability. He is convinced  that the service he has devoted to her has been of no benefit to her or to him, and only feels hatred for her. Ethan is at least able to muster enough determination to stand up to Zeena in his insistence on on driving Mattie to the station himself. But he cannot see any alternative to going along with his wife's plan to banish Mattie. Wharton uses the metaphor of 'coasting'  to encapsulate Ethan's passive approach to life. While it is possible to steer a sled, sledding is essentially an activity dictated by gravity: you let go and end up where the slope takes you. Having got into the 'sled' of his marriage with Zeena, he seems able only to keep in the tracks established by other 'coasters' - the rest of conventional society - and resign himself to his fate. Modern usage of the word 'coasting' reinforces this metaphor: we say that someone is 'coasting' if they are moving aimlessly through life with little effort. Mattie is emboldened by her discovery  that he had planned to leave his wife for her. She confesses that she has loved Ethan for a long time, revealing for the first time that Ethan's feelings are fully reciprocated. This heightens the sense of impending tragedy, as there is more at stake: we know now that the two could make a real future together. But Ethan insists, "I'm tied hand and foot," seemingly leaving them no option but the extreme one they end up taking. It is Mattie who seizes the initiative in the sledding scene, thinking up the suicide pact so that she and Ethan need never be parted. Ethan at first responds to the idea with incredulity, but as he has done all along, he allows himself to be led, and gives in to Mattie's suggestion. His boast during their first coast that he could go down blindfolded has a double ironic resonance: it foreshadows their deliberate crash, and in a wider sense, it refers to Ethan's tendency not to look out for himself but to be dictated to by others. Similarly, Ethan's reflection as they walk up the hill after their first coast, that this will be the last time they will walk together, is ironic in light of the revelations of the final chapter, which tell us that Mattie never walks again. In a terrible irony, even the suicide pact, traditionally the plan of last resort for despairing lovers, fails. Ethan and Mattie are denied their ecstatic resolution-in-death. They survive the crash, though they are terribly injured, a fact that is not yet established but that is foreshadowed by Ethan's belief that Mattie's half-conscious groans are made by a suffering small animal.