Did she imagine that Jane murmured, “Oh, let my joys have some abiding!” But Christina’s back was turned. She waved at the door and went quickly out.

“Good gracious, your eyes are so bright they’re like stars, Mrs. Chapman!” Hannah said. In the half light where Christina was being helped into her coat, the tears must have shone.

“Thank you for coming,” Hannah said warmly. “It has done us both good, believe me.”

“I’ll be back soon,” Christina said, but somehow it felt like a lie. She knew in her heart that she would not see Jane’s dear transparent face again, nor the old, veined, sensitive hands plucking a thread off her skirt. Jane was outward bound.

CHRISTINA’S JOURNAL—January 8

The winter skies! The winter light! It is dark now in the village by four, but up here on the hill we get the late light—the mountain sometimes purple against a perfectly clear, amber sky until about half past. Cornelius can wheel himself to the windows, and often we spend a half hour in silence watching the sunset and the afterglow. It is a world of sharp contrasts—black trunks of trees making patterns on the snow, all perpendiculars, and then something rich and baroque when the great pines are covered with ermine. When the sun is out in the morning, the world is so dazzling we might be living inside a great brilliant jewel. Squirrels dart down to the feeder, one hanging upside down very cleverly to feed. He jumps from the branch of the big pine by the porch and swings there by his back feet, holding a nut in his paws. The jays crowd in screaming, making their flash of blue like a note in music. Exhilarating birds! “Gangsters,” Cornelius calls them. He objects to them on moral grounds, it would seem, because they are thieves, and I tease him about this. “Who made them?” I ask, “and who are we to impose ethics on Creation?”