Another day! In the street below could be heard the characteristic sound of the lower quarters of Brest at the hour of the return to work: thousands of wooden sabots hammering on the hard granite pavé. The workers were returning to the dockyard, stopping on their way for one last drink, in the taverns but just now opened which mingled with the growing daylight the yellow light of their little lamps. Marie remained there, motionless, perceiving with a painful acuteness all these already familiar sounds of the winter mornings which ascended from the street, voices husky with alcohol and the rumblings of sabots. It was in one of those old many-storeyed houses, tall, immense, with dark yards, rough granite walls as thick as ramparts, sheltering all sorts of people, workmen, pensioners, sailors; at least thirty families of drunkards. It was now four months since--on Yves' return from the Antilles--she had left Toulven to come and live there. A growing light entered through the windows, fell on the dirty, dilapidated walls, penetrated little by little the whole of the large room in which their modest little household furniture, now in disorder, seemed lost. Clearly the day had come; and, out of thriftiness, she went and blew out the candle, and then returned to sit by the window. What was she going to do with this new day; should she work? No, she had not the heart, and, then, what was the use? Another day to be passed without a fire, with a heart that was dead, watching the rain falling, watching and waiting! Waiting, waiting in an anxiety that grew from hour to hour, waiting for the coming of the darkness, for the moment when the hammering of the sabots would begin once more in the grey street below, when the workers' day was done. For Yves and the other sailors whose ships were in the port were released at the same time as the workers in the dockyard; and then, every evening, leaning out of her window, she would watch the flood of humanity pass, searching, with anxious eyes, among all these groups, looking for him who had taken from her her life. She could recognize him from afar, by his tall figure and his bearing; his blue collar towered over the others. When she had discovered him, walking quickly, hastening towards their lodging, it seemed to her that her poor heart overflowed, that she breathed better; and when she saw him at last beneath her, entering the old low doorway, she was almost happy. He had come--and when he was there and had embraced them both, her and little Pierre, the danger was past, he would not go out again.