e could say nothing in reply, and she quickly dried her eyes. At last
she murmured in a despairing tone:

"I am--I--I am a little sad--I am a little bored."

But she was terrified at having even said so much, and added very
quickly:

"And, besides--I am--I am a little cold."

This last plea made him angry.

"Ah! yes, still your idea of the furnace. But look here, deuce take it!
you have not had one cold since you came here."

Night came on. She went up to her room, for she had insisted on having
a separate apartment. She went to bed. Even in bed 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