Margaret Lynn, member of the English Department of the State University
of Kansas, at Lawrence, is best known for her sympathetic appreciation
of prairie life.
This story is a tragedy--the tragedy of a wife's failure to understand
the finer side of her husband's nature. She learns her misjudgment all
too late--when the husband lies dead. The emotional values are the
greater because the reader inevitably contemplates the long years they
lived together in their isolation. The psychology of the situation is
portrayed with remarkable clarity. The method is very different from the
method of such writers as de Maupassant. De Maupassant's analysis and
dissecting is usually done with cold and relentless indifference; Miss
Lynn's processes are here carried out determinedly, but with full and
lingering sympathy.