Page:Ethan Frome (Scribners 1922).djvu/162

144 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 oxy- dized frame, with a bunch of dyed grasses at the back. Now all these and other tokens of her pres- ence 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.