He almost forgot that the being beside him was a girl. It was as if he were sitting beside a good companion after a long journey; after four hours in the stokehold he had often felt the same, resting for a moment with Yves on the engine-room hatch.
Great exertion often leaves the mind clear to perception: the passions, desires, and craving of life are stilled and over the resting body the mind floats clear of perception, lazy, alive to feeling, but half dead to thought.
He took his pipe from his pocket—the same pipe he had been smoking beneath the palm trees that day when Yves, returning from the north of the islet had flung the crabs beside him on the sand—filled it and lit it, whilst Marie, beside him, her hands folded and resting upon her knees, sat, her eyes gazing at the road before her yet seeming not to see it.
These fits of abstraction were characteristic of her, caused perhaps, partly by her business in life, partly by her nature.
It was as though the far off mountains, the blue distances, the visions of remote sea that made her everyday horizon, followed her through life and every now and then closed in around her, separating her for the moment from her fellow beings.
She seemed now to have forgotten the existence of Gaspard, then, a field rat from the canes scuttled across the road and the sight of it brought her back from her reverie, she shuddered, then she gave a little laugh, drew her robe tightly round her, and drew up her little naked feet under her robe.
“Ahn—voici Missie Sagesse—ah, did you see him—more crafty than the fer de lance.” With head half turned she was watching the grass still vibrating where Missie Sagesse had whisked in.
Gaspard laughed, the great fat field rat—and the West Indian field rat is the cunningest thing in nature, and looks it—did carry with it a suggestion of the Captain.
He had forgotten Sagesse, La Belle Arlésienne, and the forthcoming expedition, for the moment.
“Sagesse,” said he, “what do you know about Captain Sagesse, little one?”