On this particular evening, as night was drawing in, a traveller who had just left a train from Havre, at Barentin, followed with long strides the pathway of La Croix-de-Maufras. The country thereabouts is but one uninterrupted set of hills and dales, a sort of waving of the soil, which the railway crosses on embankments and in cuttings, alternately. The continual unevenness of the ground, the ascents and descents on either side of the line, make walking difficult and add to the feeling of deep solitude. The impoverished, whitish land lies fallow, the hillocks are crowned with small woods, while brooks, shaded with willows, run at the bottom of the narrow ravines. Certain chalky elevations are absolutely bare, and sterile hills succeed one another in the silence and abandonment of death. The young, lusty traveller hastened his steps, as if to escape from the sadness of the twilight, falling so gently over this desolate country. In the garden of the gatekeeper, a girl was drawing water at the well: a tall lass of eighteen; fair, robust, with thick lips, greenish eyes, a low forehead, and a heavy head of hair. She was not pretty, and had the heavy hips and muscular arms of a young man. As soon as she perceived the traveller coming down the path, she let go the pail and ran to the garden gate, exclaiming: "Hullo! Jacques!" He raised his head. He had just completed his twenty-seventh year. He also was tall, and very dark. A handsome fellow, with his round face and regular features, which nevertheless were marred by too heavy a jaw. His thick hair curled, as did his moustache, which was so full, so black, that it seemed to add to the pallidness of his complexion. From his delicate skin, carefully shaved on the cheeks, anyone would have taken him for a gentleman, had it not been for the indelible imprint of the workman that he bore on his engine-driver hands, which were already turning yellow with grease, although remaining small and flexible. "Good evening, Flore," he simply said. But his large dark eyes, studded with golden sparks, had become troubled with a reddish cloud, which made them dim. The lids were blinking, the eyes turned away in sudden constraint, and he experienced a feeling of uneasiness that went so far as to cause him suffering. His whole frame instinctively made a movement as if to draw back. She, standing motionless, her eyes looking straight at him, had perceived this involuntary shudder, that came on him, and which he endeavoured to master, each time that he approached a woman. It seemed to make her quite serious and sad. Then, when he asked her, in view of concealing his embarrassment, if her mother was at home, although knowing she was unwell and unable to leave the house, the girl only answered with a nod, standing aside so that he might come in without touching her; and, erect and proud, she returned without a word to the well.