They were married only
t'other day!"
This last day was really spring. It was strange and wonderful to behold
this universal serenity. Not a single cloud marred the lately flecked
sky. The wind did not blow anywhere. The sea had become quite tranquil,
and was of a pale, even blue tint. The sun shone with glaring white
brilliancy, and the rough Breton land seemed bathed in its light, as
in a rare, delicate ether; it seemed to brighten and revive even in
the utmost distance. The air had a delicious, balmy scent, as of summer
itself, and seemed as if it were always going to remain so, and never
know any more gloomy, thunderous days. The capes and bays over which
the changeful shadows of the clouds no longer passed, were outlined in
strong steady lines in the sunlight, and appeared to rest also in the
long-during calm. All this made their loving festival sweeter and longer
drawn out. The early flowers already appeared: primroses, and frail,
scentless violets grew along the hedgerows.
When Gaud asked: "How long then are you going to love me, Yann?"
He answered, surprisedly, looking at her full in the face with his frank
eyes: "Why, for ever, Gaud."
That word, spoken so simply by his fierce lips, seemed to have its true
sense of eternity.
She leaned on his arm. In the enchantment of her realized dream, she
pressed close to him, always anxious, feeling that he was as flighty as
a wild sea-bird. To-morrow he would take his soaring on the open sea.
And it was too late now, she could do nothing to stop him.
From the cliff-paths where they wandered, they could see the whole of
this sea-bound country; which seems almost treeless, strewn with low,
stunted bush and boulders. Here and there fishers' huts were scattered
over the rocks, their high battered thatches made green by the cropping
up of new mosses; and in the extreme distance, the sea, like a boundless
transparency, stretched out in a never-ending horizon, which seemed to
encircle everything.
She enjoyed telling him about all the wonderful things she had seen in
Paris, but he was very contemptuous, and was not interested.
"It's so far from the coast," said he, "and there is so much land
between, that it must be unhealthy. So many houses and so many people,
too, about! There must be lots of ills and ails in those big towns; no,
I shouldn't like to live there, certain sure!"
She smiled, surprised to see this giant so simple a fellow.
Sometimes they came ac
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