Despite Hagar's pride, blindness, age and illness, she is quite capable of fine intelligence and insight- either of things occurring at that moment in time or of things that happened in her past.

Many things, when she recalls them, she views in a different light. This is true in several cases. First of all, she now sees that the stone angel her father had bought to mark her mothers grave was also a way for him to appear to be better than he really was. She also realizes that Bram, who she thought hadn't cared about her leaving, had in fact cared. He cared even though he knew that he would never be able to live up to her high standards for him and that she would never truly respect who he was. However, she realizes this too late, near the end of Bram's natural life. Bram is...