- The narrator opens the chapter by discussing Alexandra's ignorance of the whole drama with Emil and Marie. If she'd had more "imagination,"she might have been able to figure out what was up (3.2.1).
- But for Alexandra, this has always been her blind spot; she has never had much of a personal life, and her own desires are like an "underground river" that only now and then reaches the surface.
- Still, this "river" is there, and its force comes across in the passion she invests in her business enterprises.
- The narration goes on. Alexandra can remember days when she was truly happy, when she felt almost as if she was part of the natural world that surrounds her, and she also remembers fondly the times she spent with Emil.
- In particular, she remembers one trip she and Emil took to the river, when he was just a child. They saw a duck swimming on a little inlet, and from then on, Emil always referred to it as "their" duck.
- Most of her happy memories are like this one: simple and impersonal. Alexandra's mind is like a "white book," the narrator tells us, filled with simple, everyday facts about weather and farming (3.2.3). She had grown up in hard times, and had never seen men as anything other than "work-fellows." She had never been in love.
- She does have one fantasy, though. Sometimes, when she sleeps in on Sunday mornings, she imagines that she is picked up by a pair of strong arms and carried across the fields. The arms belong to a man, but in her fantasy, she never sees him, and it is as if the man is larger and faster than any human man could be. Afterwards, she heads quickly to the bathhouse and douses herself several times with cold water.
- Now, when she's a little older, the fantasy tends to come to her at night, when she's tired after a day of hard work. The being with the strong arms lifts her up and relieves her of all her weariness.