At three o’clock on the fateful Friday morning Gaspard was awakened from sleep by a knock at his door.

It was his landlady, Man’m Faly. She had promised to wake him at three, for La Belle Arlésienne would cast her moorings and be away at four, if there was wind enough. Mistrusting herself, the old lady had not gone to bed.

When he was dressed she returned with a cup of coffee and a plate with a corrossole on it. She had known many lodgers: mates, engineers from the French steamers, men of all nationality, but she had never known one to please her better than Gaspard. He never grumbled and he had always a kind word. Besides, she knew, as half St. Pierre knew, that Marie of Morne Rouge had found her man at last, and that the man was Gaspard. The oldest woman on earth is not too old to take interest in a love-affair, and Man’m Faly was only sixty.

She stood by whilst he drank his coffee. He had paid her the night before, and his few belongings were packed in a canvas bag which she had found for him.

“Ah! well, the Bon Dié knows best, but we would none of us have you go. But you will return, that is certain.”

“Oh, yes, I will return—one does not find such a city every day, or such people. But there are storms and chances—”

He took a packet from his pocket. It contained all the199 money he had left from the payment he had received at the shipping-office and the dollars Sagesse had paid him for the gold coins. Though he had remembered the prayers for Yves and paid for them, he had quite a respectable sum left, for living at St. Pierre was very cheap, and Marie had saved him from the vices on which foolish shipmen squander their money.

“—and one never knows what may happen. See here; there is some money in this packet. It is for the little one, should anything happen to me. For Marie, she whom you saw with me yesterday.”

“I will keep it,” said Man’m Faly.

She took the packet and he took up his bag. He cast his eyes round the room. It was bare and poorly furnished, but he had been happy there; in all his wandering life he had never known such happiness; the pure, simple, clean happiness of childhood.

A minute later, he was in the street.

The Rue du Morne framed with its houses a glimpse of the sea, and the upper half of a great moon just sinking beyond the sea-line.

He had said good-bye to Marie on the evening before. His heart was heavy in him; it seemed to him now, as he came down the steep street to the harbour side, that he was leaving Paradise and leaving it forever. The coloured city of St. Pierre, the pleasant people, the easy life—where would he find a city like that in the whole wide world?

And Marie—

He was standing now on the quay-side by the steps. This was the steps where he had told ............