At first he tried coaxing her and wheedling, gave her cards to play patience and so on, but finding nothing would distract her from going out, his temper began to rise, and he told her plainly that she must wait his pleasure and that he had as much natural obstinacy as she had.  But to all that he said she paid no heed whatever but only scratched the harder.  Thus he let her continue until luncheon, when she would not sit up, or eat off a plate, but first was for getting on to the table, and when that was prevented, snatched her meat and ate it under the table.  To all his rebukes she turned a deaf or sullen ear, and so they each finished their meal eating little, either of them, for till she would sit at table he would give her no more, and his vexation had taken away 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 shall do as you like in that, but you must give up one thing, and that is you must stay with me and not go out alone, for that is dangerous.  If any dog came on you he would kill you.”

Directly he had finished speaking she came to him joyously, began fawning on him and prancing round him so that in spite of his vexation with her, and being cold, he could not help stroking her.

“Oh, Silvia, are you not wilful and cunning?  I see you glory in being so, but I shall not reproach you but shall stick to my side of the bargain, and you must stick to yours.”