How we cite our quotes: (Part.Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #10
The years seemed to stretch before her like the land; spring, summer, autumn, winter, spring; always the same patient fields, the patient little trees, the patient lives; always the same yearning, the same pulling at the chain—until the instinct to live had torn itself and bled and weakened for the last time, until the chain secured a dead woman, who might cautiously be released. (4.5.5)
Ditto here. Marie contemplates the changing of the seasons and the endlessly unchanging life of nature, and imagines her own life as part of a similar set of repetitions, until her will to go on finally gives out.