Madame Antoine had not gone to mass. Her son Tonie had, but she supposed

he would soon be back, and she invited Robert to be seated and wait for

him. But he went and sat outside the door and smoked. Madame Antoine

busied herself in the large front room preparing dinner. She was boiling

mullets over a few red coals in the huge fireplace.

Edna, left alone in the little side room, loosened her clothes, removing

the greater part of them. She bathed her face, her neck and arms in

the basin that stood between the windows. She took off her shoes and

stockings and stretched herself in the very center of the high, white

bed. How luxurious it felt to rest thus in a strange, quaint bed,

with its sweet country odor of laurel lingering about the sheets and

mattress! She stretched her strong limbs that ached a little. She ran

her fingers through her loosened hair for a while. She looked at her

round arms as she held them straight up and rubbed them one after the

other, observing closely, as if it were something she saw for the first

time, the fine, firm quality and texture of her flesh. She clasped her

hands easily above her head, and it was thus she fell asleep.

She slept lightly at first, half awake and drowsily attentive to the

things about her. She could hear Madame Antoine's heavy, scraping tread

as she walked back and forth on the sanded floor. Some chickens were

clucking outside the windows, scratching for bits of gravel in the

grass. Later she half heard the voices of Robert and Tonie talking under

the shed. She did not stir. Even her eyelids rested numb and heavily

over her sleepy eyes. The voices went on--Tonie's slow, Acadian drawl,

Robert's quick, soft, smooth French. She understood French imperfectly

unless directly addressed, and the voices were only part of the other

drowsy, muffled sounds lulling her senses.

When Edna awoke it was with the conviction that she had slept long and

soundly. The voices were hushed under the shed. Madame Antoine's step

was no longer to be heard in the adjoining room. Even the chickens had

gone elsewhere to scratch and cluck. The mosquito bar was drawn over

her; the old woman had come in while she slept and let down the bar.

Edna arose quietly from the bed, and looking between the curtains of the

window, she saw by the slanting rays of the sun that the afternoon was

far advanced. Robert was out there under the shed, reclining in the

shade against the sloping keel of the overturned boat. He was reading

from a book. Tonie was no longer with him. She wondered what had become

of the rest of the party. She peeped out at him two or three times as

she stood washing herself in the little basin between the windows.




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