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THE WINDOWalways at this hour one could not help attachingoneself to one thing especially of the things onesaw; and this thing, the long steady stroke, was herstroke. Often she found herself sitting and looking,sitting and looking, with her work in her handsuntil she became the thing she looked at—that light,for example. And it would lift up on it some littlephrase or other which had been lying in her mindlike that—"Children don’t forget, children don’tforget"—which she would repeat and begin addingto it, It will end, it will end, she said. It will come, itwill come, when suddenly she added, We are in thehands of the Lord.

But instantly she was annoyed with herself forsaying that. Who had said it? Not she; she had beentrapped into saying something she did not mean.She looked up over her knitting and met the thirdstroke and it seemed to her like her own eyes meet-ing her own eyes, searching as she alone could searchinto her mind and her heart, purifying out of ex-istence that lie, any lie. She praised herself in prais-ing the light, without vanity, for she was stern, shewas searching, she was beautiful like that light. Itwas odd, she thought, how if one was alone, oneleant to inanimate things; trees, streams, flowers;felt they expressed one; felt they became one; feltthey knew one, in a sense were one; felt an irra-97