nfection. He gave me minute directions what to do, and I obeyed them
automatically and mechanically. I spent the whole day in my room alone.

At night, after all the village was silent, with the moon shining
brilliantly down upon the deserted streets, the sound of stealthy
footsteps came to me through my window. I pulled the casement open and
looked out. There marched four men, with measured steps, bearing a
coffin on their shoulders, while Monsieur Laurentie followed them
bareheaded. It was my husband's funeral; and I sank upon my knees, and
remained kneeling till I heard them return from the little cemetery up
the valley, where so many of the cure's flock had been buried. I prayed
with all my heart that no other life would be forfeited to this
pestilence, which had seemed to have passed away from us.

But I was worn out myself with anxiety and watching. For three or four
days I was ill with a low, nervous fever--altogether unlike the terrible
typhoid, yet such as to keep me to my room. Minima and Mademoiselle
Therese were my only companions. Mademoiselle, after talking that one
night as much as she generally talked in twelve months, had relapsed
into deeper taciturnity than before. But her muteness tranquillized me.
Minima's simple talk brought me back to the level of common life. My own
nervous weeping, which I could not control, served to soothe me. My
casement, almost covered by broad, clustering vine-leaves, preserved a
cool, dim obscurity in my room. The village children seemed all at once
to have forgotten how to scream and shout, and no sound from the street
disturbed me. Even the morning and evening bell rang with a deep,
muffled tone, which scarcely stirred the silence. I heard afterward that
Jean had swathed the bell in a piece of sackcloth, and that the children
had been sent off early every morning into the woods.

But I could not remain long in that idle seclusion. I felt all my
strength returning, both of body and mind. I began to smile at Minima,
and to answer her childish prattle, with none of the feeling of utter
weariness which had at first prostrated me.

"Are we going to stay here forever and ever?" she asked me, one day,
when I felt that the solitary peace of my own chamber was growing too
monotonous for me.

"Should you like to stay, Minima?" I inquired in reply. It was a
question I must face, that of what I was going to do in the future.

"I don't know altogether," she said, reflectively. "