was
very kind. She loved him, and no guilty thought had ever entered her
mind.

Her mother came and spent every summer at Cire, and then returned to
Paris for the winter, as soon as the leaves began to fall.

Jeanne coughed a little every autumn, for the narrow valley through which
the river wound, grew foggy for five months. First of all, slight mists
hung over the meadows, making all the low-lying ground look like a large
pond, out of which the roof of the houses rose.

Then that white vapor, which rose like a tide, enveloped everything, and
turned the valley into a land of phantoms, through which men moved about
like ghosts, without recognizing each other ten yards off, and the trees,
wreathed in mist, and dripping with moisture, rose up through it.

But the people who went along the neighboring hills, and who looked down
upon the deep, white depression of the valley, saw the two huge chimneys
of Monsieur Vasseur's factories, rising above the mist below. Day and
night they vomited forth two long trails of black smoke, and that alone
indicated that people were living in that hollow, which looked as if it
were filled with a cloud of cotton.

That year, when October came, the medical men advised the young woman
to go and spend the winter in Paris with her mother, as the air of the
valley was dangerous for her weak chest, and she went. For a month or so,
she thought continually of the house which she had left, to which she
seemed rooted, and whose well-known furniture and quiet ways she loved
so much, but by degrees she grew accustomed to her new life, and got to
liking entertainments, dinners and evening parties, and balls.

Till then, she had retained her girlish manners, she had been undecided
and rather sluggish; she walked languidly, and had a tired smile, but now
she became animated and merry, and was always ready for pleasure. Men
paid her marked attentions, and she was amused at their talk, and made
fun of their gallantries, as she felt sure that she could resist them,
for she was rather disgusted with love, from what she had learned of it
in marriage.

The idea of giving up her body to the coarse caresses of such bearded
creatures, made her laugh with pity, and shudder a little with ignorance.

She asked herself how women could consent to those degrading contacts
with strangers, as they were already obliged to endure them with their
legitimate husbands. She would have loved her husband much more if they