The Story of an Hour(2)

There would be no one to live for during those coming years; she would live for herself. There would be no powerful will bending hers in that blind persistence with which men and women believe they have a right to impose a private will upon a fellow顎?creature. A kind intention or a cruel intention made the act seem no less a crime as she looked upon it in that brief moment of illumination.

And yet she had loved him -- sometimes. Often she had not. What did it matter! What could love, the unsolved mystery, count for in face of this possession of self顎?assertion which she suddenly recognized as the strongest impulse of her being!

鈥?Free! Body and soul free!鈥?she kept whispering.

Her fancy was running riot along those days ahead of her.Spring days,and summer days,and all sorts of days that would be her own.She breathed a quick prayer that life might be long.It was only yesterday she had thought with a shudder that life might be long.

She arose at length and opened the door to her sister's importunities. There was a feverish triumph in her eyes, and she carried herself unwittingly like a goddess of Victory. She clasped her sister's waist, and together they descended the stairs. Richards stood waiting for them at the bottom.

Someone was opening the front door with a latchkey. It was Brently Mallard who entered, a little travel顎?stained, composedly carrying his grip顎?sack and umbrella. He had been far from the scene of accident, and did not even know there had been one. He stood amazed at Josephine's piercing cry; at Richards' quick motion to screen him from the view of his wife.

But Richards was too late.

When the doctors came they said she had died of heart disease -- of joy that kills.