Grand Anse is just a little town, gone rather to decay, on a cliff forever swept by the sun and the trade wind.

It is the most lonely place in the world and the most quaint.

At St. Pierre, on the west side of the island, the sea is deep and still, morning comes late because of the shadow of the mountains, and the sunset blazes up the streets like a conflagration. The first rays of sunlight touch Grande Anse, morning rushes on the town across great wastes of violet-coloured sea; the dawns are immense here, what you see is the lighting up of a world; on the one side, all the world of ocean quivering and leaping in light, on the other, all the island world. Mountains springing to life against a sky still showing a trace of stars, the cloud turban of Pelée, first a luminous haze like some vast nebula just born, then a burning fleece of gold. Then, just as though the shadows of night were a garment unloosed and let slip, the great mountain undrapes itself and stands a cone of emerald green, a pyramid of colour in the blue and voiceless sky.

St. Pierre is still in shadow, but the whole eastward side of the island is burning in the sun. St. Pierre has its feet in the Caribbean Sea, but Grande Anse is washed by the Atlantic. The south equatorial current and the trade wind keep the shore forever booming with waves.

145 Marie, as she came along the national road, could hear the sea like the breathing of a vast shell, before the first houses of the town came in sight. She entered the main street, which is a continuation of the road, stopped at the shop of M. Carbet, an old sun-dried Creole trader, who could remember the time when Grande Anse was prosperous with sugar mills and plantations worked under the old regime of slavery. M. Carbet inspected the goods sent him by M. Sartine, loaded the tray with other goods to be returned, and invited the girl to sit down and rest and have some refreshment.

When she had rested herself, having still an hour before she would start on her return to St. Pierre, she left the old man to take his siesta and came out to look at the sea.

Always, when she came to Grande Anse, she would, if she had time, come to the cliff edge to look at the sea.

It is a wonderful sight, for the emerald waves come racing in on a soot-black beach. Nowhere else is there a beach like that or such curious colour effects; white foam, white gulls, blue sea, curving emerald waves, black sand. Over all the sunlight and the boom of the water.

As she stood, the trade wind blowing in her face and fluttering her robe, she saw by the sea edge two white figures, the figure of an old man and a young man.

The old man was M. Seguin, the young man was Gaspard.

M. Seguin, who had a house at Grand Anse and who lived there the greater part of the year, finding the climate much more invigorating and far less rainy than the climate of St. Pierre, had met Gaspard yesterday evening, after having parted with him in the forenoon, and the inspiration came to him to invite his new-found friend to Grande Anse. They had driven over and Gaspard was to return to-day.

146 And away up on the Morne du Midi, Marie, quite unknowing the interest that Fate was taking in her affairs, had struggled against the impulse to return to St. Pierre. Duty had won its struggle against Love, yet Love had gained his end. It was as though some subtle strategy had been working behind the face of things.

She recognized the two figures instantly, she caught her breath—“It is He!”

Almost as she sighted them, the two men began to turn their steps from the sea edge, and the first thing that struck their eyes was the gem-like figure on the little cliff outlined against the burning blue of the sky.

M. Seguin, despite his sixty years, was as keen-sighted as his companion. He recognized the girl instantly, he had spoken to her often. The prettiest porteuse in Martinique had no greater admirer than M. Seguin.

He raised his stick by way of salutation and she on the cliff raised her hand.

Then she waited as the two men came across the black sand of the beach and began to climb the cliff path. She had no false modesty, she did not palter with the truth, the being her soul craved to meet was ascending the cliff path and she waited to meet him, without a tremor or blush or pretence of turning away.

“It is Marie of Morne Rouge, La Petite Marie,” said the old man (as if Gaspard did not know), “the prettiest porteuse in the island and the best girl—but tenez, I will shew her to you.”

The sun shewed her to him. The sun had taken her little, perfectly-shaped head between his great golden hands and was raining kisses on her forehead, her face, her neck, her feet; the sea wind was fluting and folding her striped robe, which, caught up at the waist, exposed her perfectly147 formed ankles; she might have been a Greek girl on the sea cliffs of Latmos, Troy might still have been a city and Hector a living hero, so far removed from present times did she seem. Only, no Greek girl could have boasted those eyes dark and luminous, eyes that held in their depths some trace of the gloom of the tropic forests.

“Ah, Marie,” cried the old man, “petite Marie—see, I have got a friend with me, see, what do you think of him, hey, Marie—? He is the snake-killer, the man who does not fear the fer de lance, he saved a man yesterday from the fer de lance, yes, and that man was Paul Seguin. Me. Yes, one does not forget that.”

The girl was standing, as the old man chattered on, looking up under her arched eyebrows in a most charming way, half evasively, with a half smile; she had met Gaspard with a glance of recognition and now she stood like this, scarcely looking at him, yet still looking at him, scarcely seeming to hear the old man, yet hearing him, smiling at his words, yet seeming to smile through the veil of some mysterious thought.

Gaspard, fascinated, looked at her; she seemed a being elusive, scarcely real; as though she had slipped through some crystal doorway in the air to stand in the blue porch in the sunlight for a moment. Half child, half woman, half spirit, half human being—indeterminate as a dream.

“Oh, thou art pretty—thou art sweet.”

He recalled her words spoken to the fleur d’amour.

“Yes,” went on the old man, “one does not forget that—a live fer de lance with death on the tip of its tongue, and he killed it with his naked hand—give him thy hand. Marie, for the love of Paul Seguin, who knew thy father when he was prosperous and before he fell into the hands of that fer de lance, Pierre Sagesse.”

148 She came forward like a child and placed her little hand in the broad palm of Gaspard. Since the day before when she had thanked him with a glance for the flower, she had been filling his thoughts. From the first moment when he met her in the little Place de la Fontaine, she had been filling his thoughts; he was direct in love as in hate, a man without any of the false refinement of society, but he was a man and now, as he held her hand in his, for the first time in his life he felt abashed, timorous as a woman, awkward as a boy.

He had spoken to her bravely enough on the Place du Fort when he had given her the flower, but now it was different, the touch of her hand, the glance of her eyes, filled him with confusion.

She, on the other hand, was calm and confident, and had some observer been present, more keen-eyed than M. Seguin to the delicacies of expression, he would have read in her face something of triumph.

His confusion told her all, told her that she had been in his thoughts, told her of his attitude of mind towards her—It was homage without words.

When he released her hand M. Seguin took him by the arm and they turned from the sea, Marie walking with them in the direction of M. Seguin’s house.

It was a low, frame building, the best house in the town, set round with a garden where the tamarinds and the tree ferns all had a bend towards the west as though warped by the eternally blowing trade wind.

“And you are going back to St. Pierre, Marie?” asked the old man when they reached the gate.

“Oui, Missie.”

“Walking all the way?”

“Oui, Missie.”

149 “Well, good luck to thee and a safe journey, ah, that I had thy youth and strength—”

He was turning to the gate when Gaspard, with a half glance at the girl, said: “I too, am returning to St. Pierre, would Mademoiselle object to my walking with her on the road; it is a lonely road—”

“You,” said the old man, before Marie could speak. “Mon Dieu, do you think that you could keep up with a porteuse?”

Gaspard glanced at Marie and smiled, shewing his white teeth, the question seemed absurd, contrasting his strong form with the girl’s slight figure. Marie was also smiling. Their eyes met for a second.

“I will try—If Mademoiselle does not object to so feeble a companion.”

M. Seguin laughed, not without a touch of grim humour, but he offered no further opposition. Instead, he accompanied them to the shop of M. Carbet where the girl had left her tray.

M. Carbet, himself, helped to put it on her head and stood with M. Seguin watching them as they departed.

It was a little after two o’clock and the white national road lay before them, balisiers, palmistes, tamarinds on either side and fields of bending cane. The island before them leaping up to the sky in great bouquets of happy colour, purple and blue and mauve of mountain, black-blues and green of ravine and morne: above all, Pelée, with his turban of cloud. One might have imagined that some giant in play had put gum on Pelée’s head and a tuft of cotton wool on the gum.

It was the only cloud in the blue sky, and as they walked, some wind, suddenly born in the upper air, began to play with it so that it seemed to fume and rise like smoke.

150 It gave them something to talk about. He found it very difficult to follow what she said, speaking as she did, in the patois of the island and this difficulty in understanding one another gave them something to laugh about so that soon they were like two good companions almost forgetting, for a moment, the mysterious attraction that had drawn them one towards the other. At times she would seem to forget him, the old mesmerism of the road would seize her, the mesmerism of distance and light, the rock-a-bye of movement; she would hum to herself as though she were ............