At last came rain, and snow, and frost.  But the disagreeableness of winter did not keep them away.  Miette put on her long brown pelisse, and they both made light of the bad weather.  When the nights were dry and clear, and puffs of wind raised the hoar frost beneath their footsteps and fell on their faces like taps from a switch, they refrained from sitting down.  They walked quickly to and fro, wrapped in the pelisse, their cheeks blue with cold, and their eyes watering; and they laughed heartily, quite quivering with mirth, at the rapidity of their march through the freezing atmosphere.  One snowy evening they amused themselves with making an enormous snowball, which they rolled into a corner.  It remained there fully a month, which caused them fresh astonishment each time they met in the path.  Nor did the rain frighten them.  They came to see each other through the heaviest downpours, though they got wet to the skin in doing so.  Silvere would hasten to the spot, saying to himself that Miette would never be mad enough to come; and when Miette arrived, he could not find it in his heart to scold her.  In reality he had been expecting her.  At last he sought some shelter against the inclement weather, knowing quite well that they would certainly come out, however much they might promise one another not to do so when it rained.  To find a shelter he only had to disturb one of the timber-stacks; pulling out several pieces of wood and arranging them so that they would move easily, in such wise that he could displace and replace them at pleasure.

From that time forward the lovers possessed a sort of low and narrow sentry-box, a square hole, which was only big enough to hold them closely squeezed together on a beam which they had left at the bottom of the little cell.  Whenever it rained, the first to arrive would take shelter here; and on finding themselves together again they would listen with delight to the rain beating on the piles of planks.  Before and around them, through the inky blackness of the night, came a rush of water which they could not see, but which resounded continuously like the roar of a mob.  They were nevertheless quite alone, as though they had been at the end of the world or beneath the sea.  They never felt so happy, so isolated, as when they found themselves in that timber-stack, in the midst of some such deluge which threatened to carry them away at every moment.  Their bent knees almost reached the opening, and though they thrust themselves back as far as possible, the spray of the rain bathed their cheeks and hands.  The big drops, falling from the planks, splashed at regular intervals at their feet.  The brown pelisse kept them warm, and the nook was so small that Miette was compelled to sit almost on Silvere’s knees.  And they would chatter and then lapse into silence, overcome with languor, lulled by the warmth of their embrace and the monotonous beating of the shower.  For hours and hours they remained there, with that same