cold since you came here”! So, she had to be ill, she must cough before he could understand what she suffered! She was filled with the exasperated indignation of the weak and timid.
She must cough, and then, no doubt, he would be sorry for her. Well! She would cough, he would hear her cough, and the doctor would have to be sent for; he should see, her husband, he should see!
She had got out of bed, her legs and feet bare, and a childish idea made her smile: “I want a furnace and I am going to have it. I will cough until he makes up his mind to put one in the house.”
Almost naked, she sat down on a chair and waited an hour, two hours. She shivered but was not catching cold, so at last she decided on a bold expedient.
Noiselessly she left the room, went downstairs, and opened the door into the garden. The snow-covered earth seemed quite dead. Abruptly she thrust forward a bare foot, plunging it into the icy, fleecy foam. A sensation of cold, painful as a wound, gripped her heart; still she stretched out the other leg and began to descend the steps, slowly.
Then she went on over the grass, saying: “I’ll go as far as the pines.” She walked on, taking short steps, panting for breath and gasping every time she plunged her naked foot in the snow.
She touched the first pine-tree with her hand as if to convince herself that she had really accomplished her object; then she returned. Two or three times she thought she was going to fall, she felt so numb, so weak. Before going in, however, she sat down in the icy foam and even picked some up to rub on her chest.
Then she went in to bed. In an hour’s time she felt as if she had a swarm of ants in her throat, and other ants running about her body, but she slept in spite of all this.
The next morning she was coughing and could not get up. She had congestion of the lungs, she was delirious and in her delirium was always asking for a furnace. The doctor insisted on having one put in the house, and Henri yielded, though with a very bad grace.
She was incurable. Her lungs were so seriously affected as to cause acute anxiety for her life. The doctor said: “If she stays here she will not last until the winter,” so she was sent to the South. She came to Cannes, found the sun, loved the sea, and breathed the air thick with the scent of orange-flowers. Then she returned North in the spring.
But she lived with the dread of recovery; she was afraid of the long winters in Normandy; and, as soon as she was better, she opened her window at night, thinking of the delightful shores of the Mediterranean.
Now she is going to die; that she knows, and is quite happy about it. She unfolded a paper left unopened and saw the heading: “The first snow in Paris.”
First she shivered and then she smiled. Over there she can see the Esterel turning pink in the setting sun; she can see the great blue heavens, so blue; the vast stretch of blue sea, so blue.
She got up to go back with slow steps, often stopping to cough, for she had stayed out too long and she felt cold, rather cold.
She found a letter from her husband; still smiling, she read:
“My Dear Friend,
“I hope you are well and that you do not pine for our lovely country. We have had a spell of frost for some days which promises snow. Personally, I adore this weather, and you will understand that I refrain from lighting your accursed furnace …”
She ceased reading, full of happiness that, at least, she had had the furnace. Her right hand, which held the letter, fell slowly on her lap, while she raised the left to her mouth as if to calm the obstinate cough that was racking her chest.
The Model
The little town of Étretat, curved like the crescent moon, with its white cliffs, white pebbly strand and blue sea, drowsed under the sun of a day in mid-July. At the two points of the crescent, the two harbours, the small one on the right, the big one on the left, thrust out into the quiet water a dwarf foot and the foot of a colossus; and the needle, almost as high as the cliff, broad-based and tapering to the summit, reared its painted head towards the sky.
On the beach, beside the waves, a crowd of people sat watching the bathers. On the terrace of the Casino, more people sat or walked, spreading out under the brilliant sky into a garden of gay frocks blazing with red and blue umbrellas, embroidered on top with silken flowers.
On the promenade at the end of the terrace, other people, the quiet unassuming ones, sauntered, far from the smart mob.
A young man, a well-known, celebrated artist, Jean Summer by name, was walking gloomily beside a small invalid carriage in which a young woman was lying, his wife. A servant was gently pushing this sort of wheeled armchair, and the crippled woman gazed sadly at the joyful sky, the joyful day and the joyful crowd.
They did not speak. They did not look at each other.
“Let us stop a little,” said the young woman.
They stopped, and the painter seated himself on a folding chair, which the manservant produced for him.
People passing behind the still silent couple contemplated them with a sorrowful gaze. Gossip had created a whole legend of devotion. He had married her in spite of her infirmity, touched by her love, they said.
A little farther off, two young men were talking, sitting on a capstan, gazing into space.
“No, it’s not true. I tell you I know Jean Summer very well.”
“Well, but why did he marry her? She was already a cripple before her marriage,
