She nodded—a little doubtfully.
"Well, then," cried Jean, "why should I not be happy here? Have I not you, and is that not most of all? And as for the rest, do I not do well with the fishing? Is there any who does better? Do they not speak of the luck of Jean Laparde? 'Cré nom! Different from the others! Who is a fisherman if it is not I, who have been a fisherman all my life? And of what good is it to wish for anything else? What else, even if I wanted to, could I do? I do not know anything else but the boats and the nets. Is it not so, Marie-Louise?"
"Y-yes," she said, and her eyes lifted to meet his.
"And happy!" he went on. "Ah, Marie-Louise, with those bright eyes of yours that belong all to me, who could be anything but happy? Tiens! You are to be my little wife, and Bernay-sur-Mer and the blue water is to be our home, and we will fish together, and you shall sing all day in the boat, and—well, what more is there to ask for?"
"Oh, Jean!"—she was smiling now.
"There, you see!" said Jean, and burst out laughing. "Marie-Louise is herself again, and—pouf!—the blue devils are blown away. And now wait until I have finished this, and I will show you something"—he picked up the clay once more. "Only you must not look until it is done."
"Mustn't I? Oh!"—with a little moue of resignation. "Well, then, hurry, Jean," she commanded, and cupped her chin in her hands again, her elbows propped upon the ground.
It was playfully that Jean turned his back upon her, hiding his work, but as his fingers began again to draw and model the clay and his knife to chisel it, the smile went slowly from his face and his lips grew firmly closed. It was strange that Marie-Louise should have known! It was true, the fishing grew irksome too often now; for those moods, like the mood in the storm, came very often, much more often than they had been wont to do. He had laughed at her, but that was only to pretend, to chase the sadness away and make her eyes shine again. It was true, too, as he had told her, that one must take things as they were. Whether he wanted to fish or not, he must fish—voilà! How else could one make the sous with which to live?
Oh, yes, he had laughed to make her laugh; but now, pardieu! it was bringing that mood upon himself. Where was that great city and that great square, and what was that great statue before which the people stood rapt and spellbound, and why should it come so often to his thoughts and be so real as though it were a very truth and not some queer imagination of his brain? There were wonderful things in the face of that bronze figure. He leaned a little forward toward the clay before him, his lips half parted now, his fingers seeming to tingle with a life, throbbing, palpitant, that was all their own, that was apart from him entirely, for they possessed a power of movement and a purpose that he had nothing to do with. He became absorbed in his work, lost in it. Time passed.
"Jean," Marie-Louise called out, "let me see it now."