Page:Ethan Frome (Scribners 1922).djvu/90

72 would not have been sufficiently aware of her, and in the greater cities which attracted Ethan she would have suffered a complete loss of iden- tity. And within a year of their marriage she developed the "sickliness" which had since made her notable even in a community rich in patho- logical instances. When she came to take care of his mother she had seemed to Ethan like the very genius of health, but he soon saw that her skill as a nurse had been acquired by the absorbed observation of her own symptoms.

Then she too fell silent. Perhaps it was the inevitable effect of life on the farm, or perhaps, as she sometimes said, it was because Ethan "never listened." The charge was not wholly un- founded. When she spoke it was only to com- plain, and to complain of things not in his power to remedy; and to check a tendency to impatient retort he had first formed the habit of not answering her, and finally of thinking of other things while she talked. Of late, however, since he had had reasons for observing her more closely, her silence had begun to trouble him. He recalled his mother's growing taciturnity, and wondered if Zeena were also turning "queer."