Beyond it , the sea was dark and brooding . It was an evening to make most people shiver and forebode an early winter ; but Thyra loved it , as she loved all stern , harshly beautiful things . She would not light a lamp because it would blot out the savage grandeur of sea and sky . It was better to wait in the darkness until Chester came home . He was late to-night . She thought he had been detained over-time at the harbor , but she was not anxious . He would come straight home to her as soon as his business was completed -- of that she felt sure . Her thoughts went out along the bleak harbor road to meet him . She could see him plainly , coming with his free stride through the sandy hollows and over the windy hills , in the harsh , cold light of that forbidding sunset , strong and handsome in his comely youth , with her own deeply cleft chin and his father 's dark gray , straightforward eyes . No other woman in Avonlea had a son like hers -- her only one . In his brief absences she yearned after him with a maternal passion that had in it something of physical pain , so intense was it . She thought of Cynthia White , knitting across the road , with contemptuous pity . That woman had no son -- nothing but pale-faced girls . Thyra had never wanted a daughter , but she pitied and despised all sonless women . Chester 's dog whined suddenly and piercingly on the doorstep outside . He was tired of the cold stone and wanted his warm corner behind the stove . Thyra smiled grimly when she heard him . She had no intention of letting him in . She said she had always disliked dogs , but the truth , although she would not glance at it , was that she hated the animal because Chester loved him . She could not share his love with even a dumb brute .
She loved no living creature XXXXX the world but her son , and fiercely demanded a like concentrated affection from him .
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