Which of these lines from "The Story of an Hour" describes the change in Mrs. Mallard after her initial realization of her husband's death?

Her pulses beat fast, and the coursing blood warmed and relaxed every inch of her body.

But now there was a dull stare in her eyes, whose gaze was fixed away off yonder on one of those patches of blue sky.

Into this she sank, pressed down by a physical exhaustion that haunted her body and seemed to reach into her soul.

She wept at once, with sudden, wild abandonment, in her sister's arms.

Question

Which of these lines from "The Story of an Hour" describes the change in Mrs. Mallard after her initial realization of her husband's death?

Her pulses beat fast, and the coursing blood warmed and relaxed every inch of her body.

But now there was a dull stare in her eyes, whose gaze was fixed away off yonder on one of those patches of blue sky.

Into this she sank, pressed down by a physical exhaustion that haunted her body and seemed to reach into her soul.

She wept at once, with sudden, wild abandonment, in her sister's arms.

anonymous · Answer

Mrs. Mallard's initial reaction is in the last option, "She wept at once, with sudden, wild abandonment, in her sister's arms." In the story, she changes from distraught over her husbands death to excited about her future free from doing what anyone tells her to. The sentence that best illustrates this is the first option: "Her pulse beat fast, and the coursing blood warmed and relaxed every inch of her body." Notice how it says "relaxed;" she certainly wasn't relaxed when she first realized her husband was dead, so this sentence describes the change that Mrs. Mallard undergoes.