Ethan Frome (Paperback)

Excerpt: ...go on any other night they chose, since they had all time before them. She smiled back at him. "I guess you forgot " "No, I didn't forget; but it's as dark as Egypt outdoors. We might go to-morrow if there's a moon." She laughed with pleasure, her head tilted back, the lamplight sparkling on her lips and teeth. "That would be lovely, Ethan " He kept his eyes fixed on her, marvelling at the way her face changed with each turn of their talk, like a wheat-field under a summer breeze. It was intoxicating to find such magic in his clumsy words, and he longed to try new ways of using it. "Would you be scared to go down the Corbury road with me on a night like this?" he asked. Her cheeks burned redder. "I ain't any more scared than you are " "Well, I'd be scared, then; I wouldn't do it. That's an ugly corner down by the big elm. If a fellow didn't keep his eyes open he'd go plumb into it." He luxuriated in the sense of protection and authority which his words conveyed. To prolong and intensify the feeling he added: "I guess we're well enough here." She let her lids sink slowly, in the way he loved. "Yes, we're well enough here," she sighed. Her tone was so sweet that he took the pipe from his mouth and drew his chair up to the table. Leaning forward, he touched the farther end of the strip of brown stuff that she was hemming. "Say, Matt," he began with a smile, "what do you think I saw under the Varnum spruces, coming along home just now? I saw a friend of yours getting kissed." The words had been on his tongue all the evening, but now that he had spoken them they struck him as inexpressibly vulgar and out of place. Mattie blushed to the roots of her hair and pulled her needle rapidly twice or thrice through her work, insensibly drawing the end of it away from him. "I suppose it was Ruth and Ned," she said in a low voice, as though he had suddenly touched on something grave. Ethan had imagined that his allusion might open the way to the accepted...