"It is too salty!" said Yves suddenly, lying back, making a wry face, his accent very Breton, his eyes again half-closed.
"Too salty! Too salty!" . . .
Then he fell asleep again, and Jean-Marie and I burst out laughing.
I was in no frame of mind for laughter, but this notion and this spoilt child's air were too comical. . . .
Later, at ten o'clock, Yves came round, got up furtively, and disappeared.
For two days he remained hidden in the crews' quarters in the bow of the ship, only showing himself for his watch and for drill, hanging his head, not daring to look at me.
Oh! these resolutions taken twenty times and as many times broken. . . . We dare not take them again or at any rate dare not say that we have taken them. The will flags, and the days slip by while we wait inert for the return of courage and self-respect.
Slowly, however, we came back to our normal manner of existence. I used to call him in the evenings and we would walk up and down the deck together for hours on end, talking almost in the old way, in the mournful wind and the fine rain. He had still the same fashion of thinking and speaking as before, very naïve and at the same time very profound; it was the same, but with just the least suggestion of constraint; there was something frigid between us which would not thaw. I waited for a word of repentance which did not come.
Winter was advancing, the winter of the Channel, which envelopes everything—thoughts, and men, and things—in the same grey twilight. The cold dark days had come, and our evening walk was taken at a quicker pace in the damp wind of the sea.
There were times when I wanted to grip his hand and say to him: "Come, brother, I have forgiven you; let us forget all about it." But I checked the words on my lips; after all it was for him to ask forgiveness; and there remained a kind of haughty coldness in my manner which kept him at a distance from me.