Next morning he saw her off at the station. As she leaned from the window of a third class carriage she tried hard to keep back her tears. He remembered their arrival at this same station, and how he had followed her. He would miss her painfully. A last handclasp and the train bore her away. A loneliness came over him that was almost a heartache.
“That ends another chapter,” he said to himself. “Perhaps I’ll never see her again. Ah! little girl, may the gods bless you and make you happy.”
And with that he went sadly away.
CHAPTER SEVEN
AN INTERLUDE
1.
ABOUT the end of May he bought the cottage near Villefranche. It had pinkish walls that dripped roses and a long generous garden dropping to the beach. There he had a little boat pulled up on the shingle and lay for long hours in its shadow, watching the dreamy glimmer of the sea, and listening to the musical plash of the waves. The velvet monotony of sea and sky tranquilized his spirit.
He used to rise at four every morning, and work in his garden through the cool hours; then go for a swim in the bay, floating lazily on the milk-warm water, blinking at the brightness of the sun. In the evenings he would fish from his boat, pulling softly home in the starlight. He became soaked with sunshine, as brown as any of his peasant neighbours, and just as carelessly happy. He learned to look on life with quiet eyes.
It was pleasant to think that he could go on like this for twenty years. He needed so little; his garden supplied him with fruit and vegetables, the sea with fish. By selling some of his produce and keeping chickens and rabbits, he could make the place self-supporting. He had infinite time to dream and paint. If he painted patiently and sincerely during twenty years surely he could achieve something.
This was the future he sketched out for himself. One thing was lacking; he missed Margot. If only she were there, it seemed to him his happiness would be complete.
But she was back at work with Folette. She had taken her old room again, the little mansard room, overlooking the Boulevard Montparnasse. She wrote to him quite often, and always that she was very happy.