his own appetite. In the afternoon he took her out for her airing in the
garden.

She made no pretence now of enjoying the first snowdrops or the view
from the terrace. No--there was only one thing for her now--the ducks,
and she was off to them before he could stop her. Luckily they were all
swimming when she got there (for a stream running into the pond on the
far side it was not frozen there).

When he had got down to the pond, she ran out on to the ice, which would
not bear his weight, and though he called her and begged her to come
back she would not heed him but stayed frisking about, getting as near
the ducks as she dared, but being circumspect in venturing on to the
thin ice.

Presently she turned on herself and began tearing off her clothes, and
at last by biting got off her little jacket and taking it in her mouth
stuffed it into a hole in the ice where he could not get it. Then she
ran hither and thither a stark naked vixen, and without giving a glance
to her poor husband who stood silently now upon the bank, with despair
and terror settled in his mind. She let him stay there most of the
afternoon till he was chilled through and through and worn out with
watching her. At last he reflected how she had just stripped herself and
how in the morning she struggled against being dressed, and he thought
perhaps he was too strict with her and if he let her have her own way
they could manage to be happy somehow together even if she did eat off
the floor. So he called out to her then:

"Silvia, come now, be good, you shan't wear any more clothes if you
don't want to, and you needn't sit at table neither, I promise. You