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International GCSE English Language (Specification A) - Paper 2 Section A Poetry and Prose textsThe Story of an Hour
Knowing that Mrs. Mallard was afflicted with a heart trouble, great care was taken to
break to her as gently as possible the news of her husband's death.
It was her sister Josephine who told her, in broken sentences; veiled hints that
revealed in half concealing. Her husband's friend Richards was there, too, near her. It
was he who
5 had been in the newspaper office when intelligence of the railroad disaster was
received, with Brently Mallard's name leading the list of "killed." He had only taken the
time to assure himself of its truth by a second telegram, and had hastened to forestall
any less careful, less tender friend in bearing the sad message.
She did not hear the story as many women have heard the same, with a paralyzed
10 inability to accept its significance. She wept at once, with sudden, wild
abandonment, in her sister's arms. When the storm of grief had spent itself she went
away to her room alone. She would have no one follow her.
There stood, facing the open window, a comfortable, roomy armchair. Into this she
sank, pressed down by a physical exhaustion that haunted her body and seemed to
15 reach into her soul.
She could see in the open square before her house the tops of trees that were all
aquiver with the new spring life. The delicious breath of rain was in the air. In the street
below a peddler was crying his wares. The notes of a distant song which some one was
singing reached her faintly, and countless sparrows were twittering in the eaves.
20 There were patches of blue sky showing here and there through the clouds that had
met and piled one above the other in the west facing her window.
She sat with her head thrown back upon the cushion of the chair, quite motionless,
except when a sob came up into her throat and shook her, as a child who has cried
itself to sleep continues to sob in its dreams.
25 She was young, with a fair, calm face, whose lines bespoke repression and even a
certain strength. But now there was a dull stare in her eyes, whose gaze was fixed
away off yonder on one of those patches of blue sky. It was not a glance of reflection,
but rather indicated a suspension of intelligent thought.
There was something coming to her and she was waiting for it, fearfully. What was it?
30 She did not know; it was too subtle and elusive to name. But she felt it, creeping out of
the sky, reaching toward her through the sounds, the scents, the color that filled the
air.
Now her bosom rose and fell tumultuously. She was beginning to recognize this thing
that was approaching to possess her, and she was striving to beat it back with her will-
as powerless as her two white slender hands would have been.
35 When she abandoned herself a little whispered word escaped her slightly parted lips.
She said it over and over under her breath: "free, free, free!" The vacant stare and the
look of terror that had followed it went from her eyes. They stayed keen and bright. Her
pulses beat fast, and the coursing blood warmed and relaxed every inch of her body.
She did not stop to ask if it were or were not a monstrous joy that held her. A clear and
40 exalted perception enabled her to dismiss the suggestion as trivial.
She knew that she would weep again when she saw the kind, tender hands folded in
death; the face that had never looked save with love upon her, fixed and gray and
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