Peyrol folded his arms on his breast and dropped his head. Melancholy was a sentiment to which he was a stranger; for what has melancholy to do with the life of a sea-rover, a Brother of the Coast, a simple, venturesome, precarious life, full of risks and leaving no time for introspection or for that momentary self-forgetfulness which is called gaiety. Sombre fury, fierce merriment, he had known in passing gusts, coming from outside; but never this intimate inward sense of the vanity of all things, that doubt of the power within himself. “I wonder what the sign for me will be,” he thought: and concluded with self-contempt that for him there would be no sign, that he would have to die in his bed like an old yard dog in his kennel. Having reached that depth of despondency, there was nothing more before him but a black gulf into which his consciousness sank like a stone. The silence which had lasted perhaps a minute after Catherine had finished speaking was traversed suddenly by a clear high voice saying: “What are you two plotting here?” Arlette stood in the doorway of the salle. The gleam of light in the whites of her eyes set off her black and penetrating glance. The surprise was complete. The profile of Catherine, who was standing by the table, became, if possible, harder; a sharp carving of an old prophetess of some desert tribe. Arlette made three steps forward. In Peyrol even extreme astonishment was deliberate. He had been famous for never looking as though he had been caught unprepared. Age had accentuated that trait of a born leader. He only slipped off the edge of the table and said in his deep voice: “Why, patronne! We haven’t said a word to each other for ever so long.” Arlette moved nearer still. “I know,” she cried. “It was horrible. I have been watching you two. Scevola came and dumped himself on the bench close to me. He began to talk to me, and so I went away. That man bores me. And here I find you people saying nothing. It’s insupportable. What has come to you both? Say, you, Papa Peyrol--don’t you like me any more?” Her voice filled the kitchen. Peyrol went to the salle door and shut it. While coming back he was staggered by the brilliance of life within her that seemed to pale the flames of the lamp. He said half in jest: “I don’t know whether I didn’t like you better when you were quieter.” “And you would like best to see me still quieter in my grave.” She dazzled him. Vitality streamed out of her eyes, her lips, her whole person, enveloped her like a halo and ... yes, truly, the faintest possible flush had appeared on her cheeks, played on them faintly rosy like the light of a distant flame on the snow. She raised her arms up in the air and let her hands fall from on high on Peyrol’s shoulders, captured his desperately dodging eyes with her black and compelling glance, put out all her instinctive seduction--while he felt a growing fierceness in the grip of her fingers.