She walked for miles, or, down with the women at evening, she watched the boats come one by one to haven, or, far from the village, beneath some dune-like heap of sand, she sat with her hands about her knees and watched the shifting colour of the sea. She had a book with her; sometimes she read in it, and sometimes it lay unopened. All the colours went over the sea, the surf murmured, the sea-birds flew, the salt wind bent the sparse grass at the top of the dune. On such an afternoon, after long, motionless dreaming, she changed her posture, turning her eyes toward the distant village. A man was walking toward her, over the firm sand. She watched him at first dreamily, then, suddenly, with a quickened breath. While the distance between them was yet great, she knew it to be Fay. He came up to her and held out his hand. She put hers in it. "Did I startle you?" he said. "If you don't want me, I will go away." "I thought you were bridge-building in the West." "I could get away at last. I crossed the Atlantic because I wanted to see you. Do you mind, very much?" "Do I mind seeing you here, in Brittany? No, I do not know that I mind that.... Sit down and tell me about America. America has seemed so far away, these still, still days ... farther away than the sun and the moon." Long and clean-limbed, with his sea-blue eyes and quizzical look, Fay threw himself down upon the sand beside her. They talked that day of people at home, of the work he had been doing and of her long absence at Gilead Balm. She made him see the place--the old man who had died--and Old Miss and Miss Serena and Captain Bob and the servants and Lisa. "They are going to live on there?" "Yes. Just as they have done, until they, too, die.... Oh, Gilead Balm!" Late in the afternoon, the sun making a red path across the waters, and the red-sailed boats growing larger, coming toward the land, they walked back to the village together. He left her at the door of the curé's house. He himself was staying at the inn. She did not ask him how long he would stay, or if he was on his way to other, larger places. The situation accepted itself.