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“But meanwhile Lucien and Jeanne had no room to marry and set up house. It was a heavy time for them. They had some talk together of crossing over and finding a house on the mainland; but it came to nothing. The parents on both sides would not hear of it, and in truth Jeanne would have found it lonely on the mainland, away from her friends and kin; for Lucien, you see, must in any case spend half his time on the lighthouse on Ile Ouessant. So many weeks on duty, so many weeks ashore–thus it works, and even so the loneliness wears them; though our Bretons, being silent men by nature, endure it better than the rest.

“Lucien and Jeanne must wait–wait for somebody to die. In plain words it came to that. Ah, monsieur! I have heard well-to-do folk talk of our poor as unfeeling. That is an untruth. But suppose it were true. Where would the blame lie in such a story as this? Like will to like, and young blood is hot. . . . Lucien and Jeanne, however, were always well conducted. . . . Yes, yes, my story? Six months passed, and then came word that our rich artist desired to sell his little pied-a-terre; but he demanded the price he had given for it, and, moreover, what he called compensation for the buildings he had added. Also he would only sell or let it with the furniture; he wished, in short, to disencumber himself of his purchase, and without loss. This meant that Lucien less than ever could afford to buy; and there are no money-lenders on Ile Lezan. The letter came as he was on the point of departing for another six weeks on Ile Ouessant: and that evening the lovers’ feet took them to the nest they had so often dreamed of furnishing. There is no prettier cottage on the island–I will show it to you on our way back. Very disconsolately they looked at it, but there was no cure. Lucien left early next morning.

“That was last autumn, a little before the wreck of your great English steamship the Rougemont Castle. Days after, the tides carried some of the bodies even here, to Ile Lezan; but not many– four or five at the most–and we, cut off from shore around this corner of the coast, were long in hearing the terrible news. Even the lighthouse-keepers on Ile Ouessant knew nothing of it until morning, for she struck in the night, you remember, attempting to run through the Inner Passage and save her time.

“I believe–but on this point will not be certain–that the alarm first came to Lucien, and in the way I shall tell you. At any rate he was walking alone in the early morning, and somewhere along the shore to the south of the lighthouse, when he came on a body lying on the seaweed in a gully of the rocks.

“It was the body of a woman, clad only in a nightdress. As he stooped over her, Lucien saw that she was exceeding beautiful; yet not a girl, but a well-developed woman of thirty or thereabouts, with heavy coils of dark hair, well-rounded shoulders, and (as he described it to me later on) a magnificent throat.

“He had reason enough to remark her throat, for as he turned the body over–it lay on its right side–to place a hand over the heart, if perchance some life lingered, the nightdress, open at the throat, disclosed one, two, three superb necklaces of diamonds. There were rings of diamonds on her fingers, too, and afterwards many fine gems were found sewn within a short vest or camisole of silk she wore under her nightdress. But Lucien’s eyes were fastened on the three necklaces.

“Doubtless the poor lady, aroused in her berth as the ship struck, had clasped these hurriedly about her throat before rushing on deck. So, might her life be spared, she would save with it many thousands of pounds. They tell me since that in moments of panic women always think first of their jewels.