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A landsman, coming suddenly upon the cliff-locked pool, might have thought that the centuries had rolled back, and that the strange sight before him was a school of saurians lazily sunning themselves in the placid waters of a sea inlet where time had stood still. But no such vision came to Claire de Wissant.
Not for his sake, you understand he, I fear, deserves what he has suffered, what he is perhaps still suffering," a look of horror stole over his old, weather-roughened face "but for the sake of the foolish girl and for the sake of her family. You say it is a naval family?" "Yes," said Jacques de Wissant. "A noted naval family." The Admiral got up.
Admiral de Saint Vilquier had no liking for M. de Wissant a cold prig of a fellow, and yet married to such a beautiful, such a charming young woman, the daughter, too, of one of the Admiral's oldest friends, of that Admiral de Kergouët with whom he had first gone to sea a matter of fifty years ago!
The people parted with a sort of rough respect to make way for their mayor; many of them, nay the majority, were known by name to Jacques de Wissant, and the older men and women among them could remember him as a child. Rising to the tragic occasion, he walked forward with his head held high, and a look of deep concern on his pale, set face.
and then she stopped, her quivering lips refusing to form the two concluding lines. To Claire de Wissant, that moving cry from a man's soul was not dulled by familiarity, or hackneyed by common usage, and just now it found an intolerably faithful echo in her sad, rebellious heart, intensifying the anguish born of a secret and very bitter renunciation.
Alone, among the people who sometimes had friendly speech of the mayor during those sombre days of waiting, Admiral de Saint Vilquier did not condole with the anxious husband on the fact that he could not yet leave Falaise for Mantua. Jacques de Wissant woke with a start and sat up in bed.
Outwardly Claire de Wissant did her duty, entertaining his friends and relations on such occasions as was incumbent on her, and showing herself a devoted and careful mother to the twin daughters who formed the only vital link between her husband and herself. But inwardly? Inwardly they two were strangers.
By a tacit agreement with their chief, they took no part in the summer gaieties of the watering-place which has grown up round the old port of Falaise, and out of duty hours they would have led dull lives indeed had it not been for the hospitality shown them by the owners of the Pavillon de Wissant, and for the welcome which awaited them in the freer, gayer atmosphere of Madame Baudoin's villa, the Châlet des Dunes.
The car was now slowing on the sharp decline leading to the shore, and Jacques de Wissant got up and touched the chauffeur on the shoulder. "Stop here," he said. "You needn't drive down to the Châlet. I want you to turn and wait for me at the Pavillon de Wissant. Ask my servants to give you some luncheon. I may be half an hour or more, but I want to get back to Falaise as soon as I can."
"Well, you must carry out your plan, my poor Madeleine. You must go away to-night." She stared at him, her face at last blotched with tears, and a look of bewildered anguish in her eyes. "You must do this," Jacques de Wissant went on deliberately, "for Claire's sake, and for the sake of Claire's children. You haven't sufficient self-control to endure suspense calmly, secretly.
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