who never
had thought of him, to leave her afterward; what reason had he had to
look at her for a whole evening with his fair, open smile, and to use
his softest, tenderest voice to speak to her of his affairs as to a
betrothed? Now, it was impossible for her to become attached to another,
or to change. In this same country, when quite a child, she was used to
being scolded when naughty and called more stubborn than any other child
in her ideas; and she had not altered. Fine lady as she was now,
rather serious and proud in her ways, none had refashioned her, and she
remained always the same.

After this ball, the past winter had been spent in waiting to see him
again, but he had not even come to say good-bye before his departure for
Iceland. Since he was no longer by, nothing else existed in her eyes;
slowly time seemed to drag until the return in autumn, when she had made
up her mind to put an end to her doubts.

The town-hall clock struck eleven, with that peculiar resonance that
bells have during the quiet spring nights. At Paimpol eleven o'clock is
very late; so Gaud closed her window and lit her lamp, to go to bed.

Perhaps it was only shyness in Yann, after all, or was it because, being
proud also, he was afraid of a refusal, as she was so rich? She wanted
to ask him this herself straightforwardly, but Sylvestre thought that
it would not be the right thing, and it would not look well for her
to appear so bold. In Paimpol already her manners and dress were
sufficiently criticised.

She undressed slowly as if in a dream; first her muslin cap, then her
town-cut dress, which she threw carelessly on a chair. The little lamp,
alone to burn at this late hour, bathed her shoulders and bosom in its
mysterious light, her perfect form, which no eye ever had contemplated,
and never could contemplate if Yann did not marry her. She knew her face
was beautiful, but she was unconscious of the beauty of her figure. In
this remote land, among daughters of fishers, beauty of shape is almost
part of the race; it is scarcely ever noticed, and even the least
respectable women are ashamed to parade it.

Gaud began to unbraid her tresses, coiled in the shape of a snail-shell
and rolled round her ears, and two plaits fell upon her shoulders
like weighty serpents. She drew them up into a crown on the top of
her head--this was comfortable for sleeping--so that, by reason of her
straight profile, she looked like a Roman vestal.

She s