nd the tide on the ebb had driven them close to the
Perigeau where they had swamped, and somehow Gaston had been flung upon
the outer edges of the reef, and the boat, sodden, weighted, following,
had crushed him against the rocks.

Jean looked at Marie-Louise again. She was all in black now--she and
good Mother Fregeau had made the dress between them for the church that
morning, when Father Anton had said the mass for Gaston. But
Marie-Louise was not looking at him--her elbows were on the ground, her
chin was cupped in her hands, and the long black lashes veiled her
eyes. She had not told him any more of the story--Jean could picture
that for himself. How many times must she have risked her life to have
pulled Gaston to the rocks higher up upon the reef! A daughter of
France, Gaston had called her. _Bon Dieu_, but she was that, with her
courage and her strength! One would not think the strength was there,
but then the black dress did not cling like the wet clothes that other
night to show the litheness of the rounded limbs.

His fingers began to work into the clay, unnaturally diffident and
hesitant at first, not with the deft certainty of their custom, but as
though groping tentatively for something that was curiously intangible,
that eluded them. Marie-Louise, as she had been that night, was living
before him again--the lines of her form so full of grace and so
beautiful, so full of the virility of her young womanhood, the shapely
head, the hair streaming in abandon about her shoulders--and it was
like and yet not like that great bronze statue so often in his dreams,
imaginary and yet so real, that was set in the midst of that great city
in a great square. And then suddenly, strangely, of their own
volition, it seemed, his fingers, where they had been hesitant before,
began now to work with a sure swiftness.

His eyes were drinking in the contour of Marie-Louise's face in a rapt,
eager, subconscious way. There was something deeper there than the
mere prettiness of feature, something that was impressing itself in an
absorbing, insistent way upon him. Her face made him think of the face
of that statue--there was a hint of masculinity that brought with it no
coarseness, nor robbed it of its sweetness or its charm, but like that
massive face of bronze that towered high, that people with uplifted
heads stood and gazed upon, that none passed by without a pause,
stamped it with calm fearlessness; and courage and