It was too cold a day to gossip in a doorway.

It was not long past noon, but the cold had seemed to strengthen as the sun rode higher.

The wind blew from the icy northwest more frequently in fiercer gusts.

Madelon Hautville sped along before it, her red cloak flying out like a flag, and took no thought of it at all.

She was, while still in the flesh and upon the earth, so intensified in spirit that there existed for her consciousness neither heat nor cold.