it was not as yet in her heart so to do ...

In a little while, this season of mourning at an end, Lorenzo Surprenant would come back from the States for the third time and would bear her away to the unknown delights of the city--away from the great forest she hated--away from that cruel land where men who go astray perish helplessly, where women endure endless torment the while ineffectual aid is sought for them over the long roads buried in snow.

Why should she stay here to toil and suffer when she might escape to the lands of the south and a happier life.
The soft breeze telling of spring came against the window, bringing a confusion of gentle sounds; the swish and sigh of branches swaying and touching one another, the distant hooting of an owl.

Then the great silence reigned once more.

Samuel Chapdelaine was sleeping; but in this repose beside the dead was nothing unseemly or wanting in respect; chin fallen on his breast, bands lying open on his knees, he seemed to be plunged into the very depths of sorrow or striving to relinquish life that he might follow the departed a little way into the shades.
Again Maria asked herself:--"Why stay here, to toil and suffer thus?
Why?
..." And when she found no answer, it befell at length that out of the silence and the night voices arose.
No miraculous voices were these; each of us bears them when he goes apart and withdraws himself far enough to escape from the petty turmoil of his daily life.