His senses were slipping into a languid, bitter-sweet confusion, when a stinging blast of air roused him. He sat up, shivering and coughing.
The window farthest from him had been opened, and a thin curl of mist, icy cold, entered the coach. The man opposite slept and nodded, and the lady by the open window held her head turned away, and seemed to be gazing out at the darkness.
Luc’s courtesy would not permit him to ask her to close the window, though to have it wide to the night in such weather seemed folly.
The cold crept up to him, and clung to him. Recollections of all that cold had meant in his life came to him: the cold in Bohemia; the cold outside Aix; even the delicate chill of evening in the garden off the Rue Deauville. And all these associations were with Carola Koklinska, and he recalled that she had told him how she used to lie shivering under the trees when she was a child—cold, cold, cold.
Wherever her soul might be, her body was cold now, stiff in the frosty earth. He too, he shivered as he had not under the snows of Pürgitz. Again he closed his eyes, yet soon opened them.
Now the window was shut.
He stared, for he had not heard the sound of closing. When he reflected, he had not heard the sound of opening either, nor had the lady changed her attitude—and it was not possible that she could have pulled the thick strap, moved down or up the ponderous frame of wood, the heavy sheet of glass, without some sound, and without disturbing the folds of the cloak across her hands.
Luc admitted to himself, with a little quiver, that his sight was more and more failing him. In these last few weeks he could not trust himself about objects even so near as was this window, that could never have been opened.
He wondered where the cold came from, for it was increasing till every bone ached. Yet his fellow-travellers were quiet. Could it be his fancy conjuring up the past, the snow, the chill—and Carola, Clémence that was? His head sank sideways on his breast, and he fixed his blurred vision on the silent figure of the woman in the corner. Since he could not see her face, he might please himself by imagining it; since he was free to picture her as he would, he might believe she had black hair in long fine ringlets, dark eyes and hollowed cheeks, and a fair throat softly shadowed.
The coach rattled on with cumbrous pace. The lantern flame flared and dipped in the socket; the man in the frieze coat sank huddled together in a deeper sleep; and the cold became more intense, more searching, till Luc felt as if some creature of ice were embracing him.