With quick precise movements she scattered handfuls of white sand on the floor and, with the aid of a bundle of straw which she soaked in a pail of water, she scrubbed the floor vigorously until it became as yellow as gold. Since Donalda had done this job since the age of 10, she knew very well how to do the task which wasn't difficult, but arduous.

Like everything that she knew about, Donalda had learned to wash floors at her parents' house in Lake Caribou. And it was such a great asset that the wealthy Séraphin Poudrier had quickly noticed it. His fundamental principles as a shrewd old farmer prompted him to look for, in a woman, a workhorse rather than a creature for pleasure. Why did he need to make a choice when he could have both?

He had known Donalda from childhood. He had been her escort since the day they had met in a strawberry field. She had sat beside him and he was struck by the whiteness of her arms and the firmness of her breasts, so well developed for her age. He fell in love with her. At first he allowed himself to be carried away by a river of impurity, though he never tried to discover its source. Then little by little he came to the conclusion that she could become his wife. When she reached the age of twenty he married her. He was forty. The troubles of the flesh he had fought for so many years now engulfed him like a great wave of silt. But Séraphin did not let himself be moved like a fool, either emotionally or sensually. He calculated with the accuracy of a money-lender that if he gave way to physical passion little Donalda Laloge would end up costing him an arm and a leg and ruin him. He fought it so hard night and day that he came to regard his wife as merely a servant: nothing more than a creature to warm his bed.

This loveable young country girl, fresh as apple blossom, had never known carnal pleasure. She went straight from her wedding night to the bitter, harsh, practical life of a housewife, never having experienced the feeling of a long deep kiss. Once, and only once, Séraphin took her violently, but flatly refused to give her the son she wanted so much.

"I don't like children," he said, before dropping off to sleep. Another time he confided, "You know, my girl, children can be very expensive."

Donalda never talked about it again. And, after less than six months of marriage, she had become this machine that milked the cows, baked the bread, spun the wool, mended his stinking clothes, cooked, washed up, cleaned the floor, watched over the sick animals during the night, heated up the leftovers, set the fires, worked in the fields at seed time and harvest, in other words she had become a Jill-of-all-trades except love. And if the flames of lust were still dogging Séraphin, he fought them with all his might.

At first, Donalda tossed and turned in the conjugal bed, while her husband, for his part, slept like a log. She was tormented by a great craving. She lay still, and little by little her body became inert. The weeks and months passed slowly, heavily, as a swollen river flows into the harbour. She became accustomed to a life separated from her soul, then, one fine day, the pain went away all by itself. She no longer desired a man, and her body became calm.

To forget her life she worked twelve, sixteen, eighteen hours a day, desperately, as if a terrible punishment was weighing her down, or as if death couldn't come quickly enough. Séraphin without doubt regarded his wife as unusual, and he went as far as pronouncing that "for baking bread and making the floor as yellow as gold, there was no-one like Donalda in the whole county."

And the poor creature was slowly killing herself. One Saturday in July Donalda began to wash the kitchen floor. Instead of a bundle of straw, she used as a brush an old straw hat that she found in the shed. It was less sore on her fingers which were bleeding and chapped. And as usual she began to scrub the miser's old floor vigorously.

Séraphin, who was getting ready to go to the village and who had left his money on the chest of drawers stopped, transfixed, in the doorway.

"Good God," he cried, exploding with anger and clenching his fists. "What are you doing there, girl? Using a straw hat to scrub the floor? You will be the ruin of me! Are you trying to put me out into the streets? Good God!"

And before his wife had time to raise her head he snatched the hat from her hands. He went on in a quieter voice, "You're not being sensible, girl, you're not being sensible. This hat is still good. It cost me money. Ten cents at Lacour. It's ridiculous. Get the straw, girl, get the straw. I keep telling you, we are poor. If you want to be happy with me, you have to be thrifty. It would be better not to wash at all than to spend money doing it. Do you understand?"

While giving this lecture, Séraphin gently unfolded the old hat and pushed it back into shape. Donalda, still on her knees but upright as a church candle watched this extraordinary man. Her throat dry and her tongue paralysed, she wanted to die. Séraphin looked at the poor creature for a moment, and for the first time in his life, contempt, like filthy spittle, trickled out of his toothless mouth. He put the hat on the cupboard near the stove, and went out.

When he had disappeared behind the hill in the direction of the village, she went looking for some straw in the barn and began again to scrub the floor. Certainly, it wasn't the first time her husband had got into a rage about nothing on the subject of money and economy. But she had never seen such steely and violent look in his eyes. A starving wolf from the forest wasn't as frightening as that.

"I have to do better," she considered, as she scrubbed the last floorboard under the stove, "for otherwise it will be hell."