(from Ethan Frome, by Edith Wharton, 1922) Though Harmon Gow developed the tale as far as his mental and moral reach permitted there were perceptible gaps between his facts, and I had the sense that the deeper meaning of the story was in the gaps. But one phrase stuck in my memory and served as the nucleus about which I grouped my subsequent inferences: “Guess he’s been in Starkfield too many winters.”

Before my own time there was up I had learned to know what that meant. Yet I had come in the degenerate day of trolley, bicycle and rural delivery, when communication was easy between the scattered mountain villages, and the bigger towns in the valleys, such as Bettsbridge and Sadd’s Falls, had libraries, theatre and Y. M.C. A. halls to which the youth of the hills could descend for recreation. But when winter shut down on Starkfield and the village lay under a sheet of snow perpetually renewed from the pale skies, I began to see what life there—or rather its negation—must have been in Ethan Frome’s young manhood.

Judging from context clues, what does the phrase in bold most likely mean?

A. the full and extraordinary width of his arms’ length.

B. the great psychic powers he was rumored to possess.

C. the laws of Starkfield, Massachusetts, against gossip.

D. the amount he could recall and felt comfortable sharing.