she felt cold. She
thought:

"It will be always like this, always, until I die."

And she thought of her husband. How could he have said:

"You--have not had one cold since you came here"?

She would have to be ill, to cough before he could understand what she
suffered!

And she was filled with indignation, the angry indignation of a weak,
timid being.

She must cough. Then, perhaps, he would take pity on her. Well, she would
cough; he should hear her coughing; the doctor should be called in; he
should see, her husband, he should see.

She got out of bed, her legs and her feet bare, and a childish idea made
her smile:

"I want a furnace, and I must have it. I shall cough so much that he'll
have to put one in the house."

And she sat down in a chair in her nightdress. She waited an hour, two
hours. She shivered, but she did not catch cold. Then she resolved on a
bold expedient.

She noiselessly left her room, descended the stairs, and opened the gate
into the garden.

The earth, covered with snows seemed dead. She abruptly thrust forward
her bare foot, and plunged it into the icy, fleecy snow. A sensation of
cold, painful as a wound, mounted to her heart. However, she stretched
out the other leg, and began to descend the steps slowly.

Then she advanced through the grass saying to herself:

"I'll go as far as the pine trees."

She walked with quick steps, out of breath, gasping every time she
plunged her foot into the snow.

She touched the first pine tree with her hand, as if to assure herself
that she had carried out her plan to the end; then she went back into the
house. She thought two or three times that she was going to fall, so
numbed and weak did she feel. Before going in, however, she sat down in
that icy fleece, and even took up several handfuls to rub on her chest.

Then she went in and got into bed. It seemed to her at the end of an hour
that she had a swarm of ants in her throat, and that other ants were
running all over her limbs. She slept, however.

Next day she was coughing and could not get up.

She had inflammation of the lungs. She became delirious, and in her
delirium she asked for a furnace. The doctor insisted on having one put
in. Henry yielded, but with visible annoyance.

She was incurable. Her lungs were seriously affected, and those about her
feared for her life.

"If she remains here, she will not last until the winter," said the
doctor.

She was sent south. She c