On the site of the oat field which we had measured in June of the preceding year stood now the four walls of Yves' house; it had yet no shutters, no floor, no roof, and, in the moonlight, looked like a ruin.
We sat down on some stones inside, alone together for the first time.
It was of Yves we talked, needless to say. She asked me anxiously about him, about his future, imagining that I knew better than she this husband whom she adored with a kind of fear, without understanding him. And I reassured her, for I was very hopeful: the sea-rover had a good and honest heart; and if we could touch him there, we ought in the end to succeed.
Anne appeared suddenly, having approached noiselessly in order to startle us:
"Oh, Marie!" she said, "move away quickly! See what an ugly shadow you are making behind you!"
We had not noticed it, but in the moonlight her head, with the wings of her coif moving in the wind, cast behind her, on the new wall, a shadow in the form of a very large and very ugly bat. It was enough to bring us misfortune.
In Toulven there was a music of bagpipes. To reach the inn, to which they were both escorting me, we had to pass through an unexpected fête, going on in the moonlight. It was the wedding of a well-to-do couple and there was dancing in the open, on the square. I stopped, with Anne and Marie, to watch the long chain of the gavotte whirl and pass, led by the shrill voice of the pipes. The full moon made whiter the coifs of the women which flitted past us as if carried away by wind and speed; on the breasts of the men we caught the fleeting glitter of embroidered gorgets and silver spangles.
At the farther end of Toulven we came upon another concourse. It did not seem natural, this animation in the village, at night; more coifs again, hurrying, pressing forward in order to get a better view; for a band of pilgrims was returning from Lourdes. They entered the village singing hymns.
"There have been two miracles, sir; we heard so this morning by telegraph."
I turned round and saw that it was Pierre Kerbras, Anne's sweetheart, who vouchsafed us this information.