Olive Higgins Prouty

“ Therefore, during the spring and summer and early fall these young men seldom caught a glimpse of her mother in the ugly mouse-colored wrapper and flat shoes shuffling about in the kitchen, washing dishes, or mixing bread. They never had a chance to discover that the red cottage lacked a dining-room. Later, after Stella's charms had worked their blinding enchantment, it was her theory that the skeletons inside the house were less to be feared. ”

“ After providing herself with a few possible candidates for the marriage, the enterprising Stella spent long laborious hours making the yard surrounding the red cottage attractive, with morning-glory vines and wild-cucumber; and built herself a little temple that was very becoming to her type of beauty; and when the young men from the technical school came, in their clean collars, and dark suits, with beautiful creases down the front legs of their trousers, to call on Miss Martin, she usually chanced to be sitting in her little shrine. ”

“ Stephen believed he would suffer always. But he didn't take into consideration his youth. There is something about twenty-three that struggles and fights all by itself—never mind how indifferent the soul, how sick the body—and accomplishes its purposes and designs without help. The same month that Stephen's mother's age came to her rescue, Stephen's youth came to his. Early in September, before a year had passed since the Dallas oak had fallen, death delivered Mrs. Dallas from her suffering. It was two or three weeks before his mother died that Stephen met Stella. ”

“ None of the men who ate breakfast and supper with him—who softened their bread-crusts in their coffee, and prepared their meat and potatoes as Stephen had seen the dog's meat and potatoes prepared at home, chopped all up and covered with gravy—had heard of Stephen Dallas of Reddington. Success, too many raises, would mean exposure finally, opening up the old wound again. ”

“ The red cottage house where Stella had lived as a young girl, and until she married Stephen Dallas, was located in an outlying district of Milhampton. The district was known as Cataract Village. The little settlement of houses was named after the Cataract Mills, and the mills were named after a fall of water hidden inside them somewhere, over which they crouched like some great vampire and sucked the strength that made their wheels go round.
Cataract Village was the home of the Cataract Mill employees. Stella's father had worked in the mills ever since he was a boy. ”

“ Even the raise in his position, and pay, at the end of the first three months, gave him no thrill. What was the use of his rising in the world? Wasn't oblivion what he desired more than anything else? ”