walked together as far as the
bend of the river, below ..."

He waited, expectantly. She had ceased to laugh, and looked at him,
straight in the eyes.

"Yes, certainly, I remember it."

He answered, shivering all over.

"Well ... that day ... if I had been ... if I had
been ... enterprising ... what would you have done?"

She began to laugh as only a happy woman can laugh, who has nothing to
regret, and responded, frankly, in a voice tinged with irony:

"I would have yielded, my friend."

She then turned on her heels and went back to her jam-making.

Savel rushed into the street, cast down, as though he had encountered
some great disaster. He walked with giant strides, through the rain,
straight on, until he reached the river, without thinking where he was
going. When he reached the bank he turned to the right and followed it.
He walked a long time, as if urged on by some instinct. His clothes were
running with water, his hat was bashed in, as soft as a piece of rag,
and dripping like a thatched roof. He walked on, straight in front of
him. At last, he came to the place where they had lunched so long, long
ago, the recollection of which had tortured his heart. He sat down under
the leafless trees, and he wept.

THE PORT

PART I

Having sailed from Havre on the 3rd of May, 1882, for a voyage in the
China seas, the square-rigged three-master, _Notre Dame des Vents_, made
her way back into the port of Marseilles, on the 8th of August, 1886,
after an absence of four years. When she had discharged her first cargo
in the Chinese port for which she was bound, she had immediately found a
new freight for Buenos Ayres, and from that place had conveyed goods to
Brazil.

Other passages, then damage repairs, calms ranging over several months,
gales which knocked her out of her course--all the accidents, adventures,
and misadventures of the sea, in short--had kept far from her country,
this Norman three-master, which had come back to Marseilles with her hold
full of tin boxes containing American preserves.

At her departure, she had on board, besides the captain and the mate,
fourteen sailors, eight Normans and six Britons. On her return, there
were left only five Britons and four Normans; the other Briton had died
while on the way; the four Normans having disappeared under various
circumstances, had been replaced by two Americans, a negro, and a
Norwegian carried off, one evening, from a tavern in Singapore.