tle cracking noises
as if they were shivering. Jeanne lay shaking with cold; twice she got
up to put more logs on the fire, and to pile her petticoats and dresses
on the bed, but nothing seemed to make her any warmer. There were
nervous twitchings in her legs, which made her toss and turn restlessly
from side to side. Her feet were numbed, her teeth chattered, her hands
trembled, her heart beat so slowly that sometimes it seemed to stop
altogether; and she gasped for breath as if she could not draw the air
into her lungs.

As the cold crept higher and higher up her limbs, she was seized with a
terrible fear. She had never felt like this before; life seemed to be
gradually slipping away from her, and she thought each breath she drew
would be her last.

"I am going to die! I am going to die!" she thought; and, in her terror,
she jumped out of bed, and rang for Rosalie.

No one came; she rang again, and again waited for an answer, shuddering
and half-frozen; but she waited in vain. Perhaps the maid was sleeping
too heavily for the bell to arouse her, and, almost beside herself with
fear, Jeanne rushed out onto the landing without putting anything around
her, and with bare feet. She went noiselessly up the dark stairs, felt
for Rosalie's door, opened it, and called "Rosalie!" then went into the
room, stumbled against the bed, passed her hands over it, and found it
empty and quite cold, as if no one had slept in it that night.

"Surely she cannot have gone out in such weather as this," she thought.

Her heart began to beat so violently that it almost suffocated her, and
she went downstairs to rouse Julien, her legs giving way under her as
she walked. She burst open her husband's door, and hurried across the
room, spurred on by the idea that she was going to die and the fear that
she would become unconscious before she could see him again.

Suddenly she stopped with a shriek, for by the light of the dying fire
she saw Rosalie's head on the pillow beside her husband's. At her cry
they both started up, but she had already recovered from the first shock
of her discovery, and fled to her room, while Julien called after her,
"Jeanne! Jeanne!" She felt she could not see him or listen to his
excuses and his lies, and again rushing out of her room she ran
downstairs. The staircase was in total darkness, but filled with the
desire of flight, of getting away without seeing or hearing any more,
she never stayed to think that she m