Aloofly I live in this Butte in the outward rôle of a family daughter
with no responsibilities.
This Butte is an incongruous living-place for me.
And I have not one human friend in it--no kindliness. And Nature in
her perplexingest mood would not of herself have cast me as a family
daughter. Three things have kept me thus for four years past: that
nothing has called me out of it: a slight family pressure like a tiny
needle-point which pierces only if one moves: and to stay thus is
presently the line of least resistance.
Unless impelled to violent action by a violent reason--like love
or hatred or jealousy or a baby or humiliated pride or rowelling
ambition--a woman follows the physical line of least resistance. I
have followed it these years with outward acquiescence and inward
rages--languid rages which lay me waste.
The years and acquiescences and rages have built up a mood which
compasses me, drives me, damns me and lifts me up.
It is a forceful mood, though I am not myself forceful.