ut it was too late now, worse luck! So they gave their arms to the
lasses, the violins began to play, and joyously they all tramped out.

At first Yann had only paid her a few innocent compliments, such as fall
to a chance partner met at a wedding, and of whom one knows but little.
Amidst all the couples in the procession, they formed the only one of
strangers, the others were all relatives or sweethearts.

But during the evening while the dancing was going on, the talk between
them had again turned to the subject of the fish, and looking her
straight in the eyes, he roughly said to her:

"You are the only person about Paimpol, and even in the world, for whom
I would have missed a windfall; truly, for nobody else would I have come
back from my fishing, Mademoiselle Gaud."

At first she was rather astonished that this fisherman should dare so
to address her who had come to this ball rather like a young queen, but
then delighted, she had ended by answering:

"Thank you, Monsieur Yann; and I, too, would rather be with you than
with anybody else."

That was all. But from that moment until the end of the dancing, they
kept on chatting in a different tone than before, low and soft-voiced.

The dancing was to the sound of a hurdy-gurdy and violin, the same
couples almost always together. When Yann returned to invite her
again, after having danced with another girl for politeness' sake,
they exchanged a smile, like friends meeting anew, and continued their
interrupted conversation, which had become very close. Simply enough,
Yann spoke of his fisher life, its hardships, its wage, and of his
parents' difficulties in former years, when they had fourteen little
Gaoses to bring up, he being the eldest. Now, the old folks were out of
the reach of need, because of a wreck that their father had found in the
Channel, the sale of which had brought in 10,000 francs, omitting the
share claimed by the Treasury. With the money they built an upper story
to their house, which was situated at the point of Ploubazlanec, at the
very land's end, in the hamlet of Pors-Even, overlooking the sea, and
having a grand outlook.

"It is mighty tough, though," said he, "this here life of an Icelander,
having to start in February for such a country, where it is awful cold
and bleak, with a raging, foaming sea."

Gaud remembered every phrase of their conversation at the ball, as if it
had all happened yesterday, and details came regularly back to h