Each day, I wished to prolong this hour so that I might have time to do in it all the things that were suggested to me. I wished to walk down the road to the Hotel Barstow to see the rows and rows of windows shining like solid blocks of wine-red ice, giving to the old-fashioned, quasi-baroque façade an interest which was lacking at any other time. The whole aspect of the building would be improved, for this was a benevolent kind of light which enriched the shadows with the same ruddy color it infused into the surfaces, but in such a way that there were no abrupt contrasts, only a deepening and reinforcement. It was quite unlike the light earlier in the afternoon which, cold and white, accented the dirtiness of the old paint and brutally discovered all the vulgarity of the building, the whimsical fenestration following the roof line, the tedious repetition of egg-and-dart, the ogees of the veranda, the festoons of roses looped and ribboned over the doors and windows. I should have liked, too, to look at the State House dome from Miss Pride’s belvedere and to accompany with my eyes the snail-paced approach of coal-boats to Boston harbor; or to watch, from the topmost of the rocks at the Point, the fearful, reddened water which now in the winter supported few fishing and no sailboats, as if it had devoured them all but still in hunger thrashed many tails and snarled for something more to swallow.

I could not even choose between the sky and my mother’s face, and my eyes roamed heavily from one to the other. Her chant, toneless, and yet indescribably sweet, went on:

Till with age my hair starts graying,

Till my locks have ceased to curl,

Let me live in joy and gladness,

Let me love a pretty girl!

Let me live my life in joy and gladness,

Let me love a pretty girl!

I felt that I had all the time in the world. In various versions, I posed myself the question: Is she mad? Can she sing really as carelessly as this when her son is dying? Or is it that the song hides her feelings? Her needle’s movement followed the pattern of the rhythm of her voice; at the end of a line or at a rest, she would gracefully and deliberately draw out her green silk thread and let it hang in the air a moment like a sunbeam. I could not tell, afterwards, if it was one or several minutes before I realized that she was silent and had looked up from her fancy-work. She rose and crossed directly to the bedroom door. I followed her.