The cold air was impregnated with the acrid odour of sea-wrack. Night came on slowly, with silent stealth, and all these large backs of stone began to take on the appearance of herds of monsters. We took the shell-fish on the end of our knives and ate them as they were, all living, with our slices of bread, being both hungry and in haste to be done before the light should fail.
"It's not so good as it used to be," said Yves when he had finished eating. "And somehow it seems to me melancholy here. . . . When I was little, I remember, there were times when I had the same feeling, but not so strongly as to-night. Let us go, shall we?"
Rather surprised by what he said, I replied to him:
"My poor Yves, I think you are becoming like me!"
"Like you, do you say?"
And he looked at me with a long melancholy smile, which revealed to me new things in him, new and indefinable things. And I realized that evening that he had in fact, much more than I should have thought, ways of thinking, ideas, sensations, similar to mine.
"And do you know," he continued, as if following still the same train of thought, "do you know there is one thing which troubles me often when we are far away, at sea or in countries overseas? I scarcely dare to tell you. . . . It is the idea that I might die perhaps and not be buried in our cemetery here."
And he pointed to the steeple of Plouherzel Church, which could be seen above the granite cliffs in the far distance, like a grey arrow.
"It is not from any religious feeling, as you will understand; for you know that I have no love for the clergy. No, it is just an idea that comes to me, I cannot tell you why. And when I am unhappy enough to think of this thing, I cease somehow to be brave."