“Nineteen years alone, m’sieu. Before that I had my little Marie.”
“Marie?”
“My child, m’sieu. She is buried in the sand behind the inn.”
I looked at him in silence. His brown, wrinkled face was calm, but in his prominent eyes there was still the hot shining look I had observed in them when I arrived.
“The palms begin there,” he added. “Year by year I have saved what I could, and now I have bought all the palm-trees near where she lies.”
He puffed away at his Havana.
“You come from France?” I asked presently.
“From the Midi—I was born at Cassis, near Marseille.”
“Don’t you ever intend to go back there?”
“Never, m’sieu. Would you have me desert my child?”