Choice C is the best answer. The first paragraph traces the inception of Ethan’s feelings for Mattie: Ethan “had taken to the girl from the first day” (line 4) and saw her as “like the lighting of a fire on a cold hearth” (line 9). The second paragraph (lines 14–34) focuses on “their night walks back to the farm” and Ethan’s elation in perceiving that “one other spirit . . . trembled with the same touch of wonder” that characterized his own (line 21). In other words, the main focus of the first two paragraphs is the intensity of feeling one character, Ethan, has for another, Mattie. The last paragraph shifts the focus of the passage to Ethan’s change in perception; he sees Mattie in a social setting interacting with other men, wonders “how he could have ever thought that his dull talk interested her” (line 37), interprets her seeming happiness as “plain proof of indifference” toward him (line 38), and sees betrayal in the “two or three gestures which, in his fatuity, he had thought she kept for him” (line 40).
Choice A is not the best answer because while Ethan acknowledges that Mattie “don’t look much on housework” (line 8), the first paragraph also notes that Ethan “had taken to the girl from the first day” (line 4), and there is thus no support for the notion that Ethan’s “reservations” about Mattie lasted for any length of time or ever constitute the main focus of the narrative.
Choice B is not the best answer because while Ethan does exhibit ambivalence about his sensitive nature, seeing it as a “mournful privilege” (line 21), the main focus of the narrative does not shift to his recognition of the advantages of having profound emotions. Indeed, in the last paragraph Ethan’s profound emotions give him only grief, as he sees Mattie seemingly rejecting him.
Choice D is not the best answer because while the second paragraph (lines 14–34) does discuss in depth the value Ethan attaches to natural beauty, nothing in the passage signifies that he has rejected natural beauty in favor of human artistry. The closest the passage comes to this is in lines 31–34, in which Mattie is said to have likened a natural scene to a painting.