PRESERVATION PHOTOCOPY: ORIGINAL MATERIAL RESTRICTED:

She went to the window and put her head outside, then her arms. The stiff white curtains scratched her neck and as the warm air came up to her from the earth a strange numbness blinded her, brought death to her body. "But death is already in me," she thought without emotion. "It comes from the inside. Not from the air. It is in my feet, maybe, working up." Then she was dumb with the warm spring air blowing over her, the leaves swaying, the earth rocking and opening, sending up its moist fragrance. She could taste death and spring in her mouth, back where her tongue started.

There were the pine trees that had looked so cold and black in the winter, bent with snow and cedar birds. Now they were green like the grass, like the leaves that were unfurling in spring air. Now a vapor was rising from the earth over in the next garden where Dan Bolt was ploughing. Soon the seeds would be in the ground, pushing, pushing. For years she had known far away in herself that she was going to die, not sometime far offuture when others died, but soon. Dr. Thompson had said so. She had paid him three dollars.

The bell rang and she opened the front door. There was no one on this part of the house, it was cold and grey. It always took the ice a long time to melt here and sometimes the snow drops came blossoming against it.

"Want any flower seeds? I've got asters and all the others you always buy, Miss Graham."

She looked down at the muddy boots. "Goodness, child, where are your rubbers?"

"I don't have to wear them no more. I got my summer underwear on even. Me let me put it on yesterday when I took my bath." She stuck out her leg. "See! And I ain't a bit cold. Gee, it feels good."

"I'll take two packages of aster, one of poppies, one of verbena, and some of those four O'clocks. Mrs. Colline had beautiful ones last year."

"Is she went to the mantel for her purse she glanced into the glass. Her thin sallow face smote her, the large black discs under the eyes, the pale lips that were as ghostly as the cheeks. She turned cold, then hot, and sweat poured out of her.

She took her purse and went to the door. Then the bright packets were in her hand. "Oh, pansies. I want some pansies."

"Sure. Say, I want to sell enough to get a pony, Miss Graham. I want a black one, a Shetland one. Oscar's trying for the cart. Here it is."

She looked down into the face of a paney on the brown envelope. It looked back at her with its velvet kitten face and that one golden eye. She stood holding it, not looking any more, holding it, almost smelling it, her body rigid.

"Gee, Miss Graham, you look awful sick. Are you going to have a garden just the same this year? Me said you were awful poorly and I was scared maybe you wouldn't buy any seeds from me."

"I forgot."

"Thank you, Miss Graham. Maybe I'll get that pony and if you're well enough I'll take you a ride."

She shut the door and went into her bedroom. She lay down on the bed. Then she got up quickly and led a newspaper over the white spread for protection. She looked up at the watered paper on the ceiling and studied the place where the roof leaked making that round blurred brown spot just over the bureau. She had studied it those days then she had lain there knowing something inside her was diseased, when she had been afraid to ask the doctor. There had been lights in the flat darkness when she had longed for death, for anything that would take her away from the stolid, vapid flavors of her life. But that had been before she was sure.

Now she was mum again, lying there like a skeleton. She got up and smoothed her hair. Then she took the seeds and went into the garden. Three days ago she had paid Dan Bölt a dollar for doing that little bit of spading and raking. A dollar to that lazy fellow for a job she could have done better herself. She began re-raking, stooping to pick up tiny stones, bits of old sod, the top of a tin can thick with rust. "I'll never hire that careless fellow again." She opened a package of seeds and began to sprinkle them like dust in the rich earth.