"You might as well make up your mind to it.

I suppose it had to come, and maybe it's all for the best." Aunt Maria's voice sounded as if she were trying to reconcile the love of God with the existence of hell and eternal torment.

She closed her door with a slam.

There are, in some New England women, impulses of fierce childishness.
Maria, when she was in her room, had never felt so lonely in her life.

A kind of rage of loneliness possessed her.