She liked thinking of Martin in this way--it comforted her. It made her feel as if, now that everything had been taken from her, the past so long lost had been given back. And not the past only, for if her memories lived, her hopes lived too--not even Ellen's bitterness could kill them.... There she stood, nearly forty years old, on the threshold of an entirely new life--her lover, her sister, her farm, her home, her good name, all lost. But the past and the future still were hers.