oan, the deserter, an
elder brother of Sylvestre's, whom no one in the family ever mentioned
now, but who still lived somewhere over in America, thus depriving
his younger brother of the military exemption. Moreover, it had been
objected that she had her small pension, allowed to the widows of
sailors, and the Admiralty could not deem her poor enough.

When she returned home, she said her prayers at length for all her dead
ones, sons and grandsons; then she prayed again with renewed strength
and confidence for her Sylvestre, and tried to sleep--thinking of the
"suit of wood," her heart sadly aching at the thought of being so old,
when this new parting was imminent.

Meanwhile, the other victim of separation, the girl, had remained seated
at her window, gazing upon the golden rays of the setting sun, reflected
on the granite walls, and the black swallows wheeling across the sky
above. Paimpol was always quiet on these long May evenings, even on
Sundays; the lasses, who had not a single lad to make love to them,
sauntered along, in couples or three together, brooding of their lovers
in Iceland.

"A word of greeting to young Gaos!" She had been greatly affected in
writing that sentence, and that name, which now she could not forget.
She often spent her evenings here at the window, like a grand lady. Her
father did not approve of her walking with the other girls of her age,
who had been her early playmates. And as he left the cafe, and walked up
and down, smoking his pipe with old seamen like himself, he was happy to
look up at his daughter among her flowers, in his grand house.

"Young Gaos!" Against her will she gazed seaward; it could not be seen,
but she felt it was nigh, at the end of the tiny street crowded
with fishermen. And her thoughts travelled through a fascinating and
delightful infinite, far, far away to the northern seas, where "_La
Marie_, Captain Guermeur," was sailing. A strange man was young Gaos!
retiring and almost incomprehensible now, after having come forward so
audaciously, yet so lovingly.

In her long reverie, she remembered her return to Brittany, which had
taken place the year before. One December morning after a night of
travelling, the train from Paris had deposited her father and herself
at Guingamp. It was a damp, foggy morning, cold and almost dark. She
had been seized with a previously unknown feeling; she could scarcely
recognise the quaint little town, which she had only seen during