that there was no help
for Uncle Gaston and myself, and that no one could come to us even if
we were seen, I saw your lantern and the _bon Dieu_ told me it was you
and I had no more fear. I was so sure then--so sure then. Oh, Jean,
you must be very good to me to-day. It--it was so hard"--the dark eyes
were swimming now with tears--"to say good-bye to Uncle Gaston.
Perhaps it is that that is making me feel so strangely. But sometimes
it seems as though it could never be, the great happiness for you and
me, it is so great to think about that--that it frightens me. And I
have wanted to talk to you about it, Jean, often and often. Does it
make you very glad and happy, too, to think of just you and me together
here, and our home, and the fishing, and--and years and years of it?"

"But, yes; of course!" smiled Jean; and, picking up the clay again,
began to scrape at it with his knife.

"But are you sure, Jean?"--there was a little tremor in her voice. "I
do not mean so much that you are sure you love me, but that you are
sure you would always be happy to stay here in Bernay-sur-Mer. You are
not like the other men."

"How not like them?" Jean demanded, surveying in an absorbed sort of
way the little clay figure that was taking on rough outline now. "How
not like them?"

"Well--that!"--Marie-Louise pointed at the clay in his hands. "That,
for one thing--that you are always playing with, that it seems you
cannot put aside for an instant, even though I asked you to a moment
ago. You are always making the _poupees_, and if not the _poupees_
with mud and dirt, then you must waste the inside of Mother Fregeau's
loaves that she bakes herself, or steal the dough before it reaches the
oven to keep your fingers busy making little faces and droll things out
of it."

Jean looked up to stare at Marie-Louise a little perplexedly.

"_Mais, zut_!" he exclaimed. "And what of that! And if I amuse myself
that way, what of that? It is nothing!"

"Nevertheless," Marie-Louise insisted, nodding her head earnestly, "it
is true what I have said--that you are not like the other men in
Bernay-sur-Mer. Do you think that I have not watched you, Jean? And
have you not said little things to show that you grow tired of the
fishing?"

"But that is true of everybody," Jean protested. "Does not Father
Anton say that all the world is poor because there is none in it who is
contented? And if I grumble sometimes, do not all the others