to be spent"; but now
Julien kept saying to her: "Will you never be cured of throwing money
away?" Whenever he could manage to reduce a salary or a bill by a few
pence he would slip the money into his pocket, saying, with a pleased
smile:

"Little streams make big rivers."

Jeanne would sometimes find herself dreaming as she used to do before
she was married. She would gradually stop working, and with her hands
lying idle in her lap and her eyes fixed on space, she built castles in
the air as if she were a young girl again. But the voice of Julien,
giving an order to old Simon, would call her back to the realities of
life, and she would take up her work, thinking, "Ah, that is all over
and done with now," and a tear would fall on her fingers as they pushed
the needle through the stuff.

Rosalie, who used to be so gay and lively, always singing snatches of
songs as she went about her work, gradually changed also. Her plump
round cheeks had fallen in and lost their brightened color, and her skin
was muddy and dark. Jeanne often asked her if she were ill, but the
little maid always answered with a faint blush, "No, madame," and got
away as quickly as she could. Instead of tripping along as she had
always done, she now dragged herself painfully from room to room, and
seemed not even to care how she looked, for the peddlers in vain spread
out their ribbons and corsets and bottles of scent before her; she never
bought anything from them now.

At the end of January, the heavy clouds came across the sea from the
north, and there was a heavy fall of snow. In one night the whole plain
was whitened, and, in the morning the trees looked as if a mantle of
frozen foam had been cast over them.

Julien put on his high boots, and passed his time in the ditch between
the wood and the plain, watching for the migrating birds. Every now and
then his shots would break the frozen silence of the fields, and hordes
of black crows flew from the trees in terror. Jeanne, tired of staying
indoors, would go out on the steps of the house, where, in the stillness
of this snow-covered world, she could hear the bustle of the farms, or
the far-away murmur of the waves and the soft continual rustle of the
falling snow.

On one of these cold, white mornings she was sitting by her bedroom
fire, while Rosalie, who looked worse and worse every day, was slowly
making the bed. All at once Jeanne heard a sigh of pain behind her.
Without turning her head,