That morning the furnace of the new steam heater had for the first time been lighted. Its disagreeable sound⁠—an intermittent hiccup⁠—had no part whatsoever in my memories of Doncières. But its prolonged encounter, in me this afternoon, with them was to give it so lasting an affinity with them that whenever, after succeeding more or less in forgetting it, I heard the central heater hiccup again it reminded me of them.