shook their heads, and said that old times had come again, and no
mistake. There was eager pride in the lowest mercury, and the man
whose thermometer registered thirty degrees below zero was happier than
he who could boast but of twenty-five. There was not so much snow as
in milder seasons, but the cold held without breaking, week after week:
clear weather; no wind, but the air taking the breath from the dryness
of it, and in the evening the haze hanging blue and low that tells of
intensest cold. As the snow fell, it remained. The drifts and hollows
never changed their shape, as in a soft or a windy season, but seemed
fixed as they were for all time. Across the road from Jacques De
Arthenay's house, a huge drift had been piled by the first snowstorm of
the winter. Nearly as high as the house it was, and its top combed
forward, like a wave ready to break; and in the blue hollow beneath the
curling crest was the likeness of a great face. A rock cropped out,
and ice had formed upon its surface, so that the snow fell away from
it. The explanation was simple enough; Jacques De Arthenay, coming and
going at his work, never so much as looked at it; but to Marie it was a
strange and a dreadful thing to see. Night and morning, in the cold
blue light of the winter moon and the bright hard glitter of the winter
sun, the face was always there, gazing in at her through the window,
seeing everything she did, perhaps--who could tell?--seeing everything
she thought. She changed her seat, and drew down the blind that faced
the drift; yet it had a strange fascination for her none the less, and
many times in the day she would go and peep through the blind, and
shiver, and then come away moaning in a little way that she had when
she was alone. It was pitiful to see how she shrank from the
cold,--the tender creature who seemed born to live and bloom with the
flowers, perhaps to wither with them. Sometimes it seemed to her as if
she could not bear it, as if she must run away and find the birds, and
the green and joyous things that she loved. The pines were always