It took me a very long time to make out all this, for every now and then my brain seemed to lose its power for a while, and every thing whirled about me.  Especially there was that awful sensation of sinking down, down through the pebbles into some chasm that was bottomless.  I had never either felt pain or fainted before, and all this alarmed me.

Presently I began to listen to the rustle of the pebbles, as the rising tide flowed over them and fell back again, leaving them all ajar and grating against one another—­strange, gurgling, jangling sound that seemed to have some meaning.  It was very cold, and a creeping moisture was oozing up from the water.  A vague wonder took hold of me as to whether I was really above the line of the tide, for, now the March tides were come, I did not know how high their flood was.  But I thought of it without any active feeling of terror or pain.  I was numbed in body and mind.  The ceaseless chime of the waves, and the regularity of the rustling play of the pebbles, seemed to lull and soothe me, almost in spite of myself.  Cold I was, and in sharp pain, but my mind had not energy enough either for fear or effort.  What appeared to me most terrible was the sensation, coming back time after time, of sinking, sinking into the fancied chasm beneath me.

I remember also watching a spray of ivy, far above my head, swaying and waving about in the wind; and a little bird, darting here and there with a brisk flutter of its tiny wings, and a chirping note of satisfaction; and the cloud drifting in soft, small cloudlets across the sky.  These things I saw, not as if they were real, but rather as if they were memories of things that had passed before my eyes many years before.

At last—–­ whether years or hours only had gone by, I could not then have told you—­I heard the regular and careful beat of oars upon the water, and presently the grating of a boat’s keel upon the shingle, with the rattle of a chain cast out with the grapnel.  I could not turn round or raise my head, but I was sure it was Tardif, and that he did not yet see me, for he was whistling softly to himself.  I had never heard him whistle before.

“Tardif!” I cried, attempting to shout, but my voice sounded very weak in my own ears, and the other sounds about me seemed very loud.  He went on with his unlading, half whistling and half humming his tune, as he landed the nets and creel on the beach.

“Tardif!” I called again, summoning all my strength, and raising my head an inch or two from the hard pebbles which had been its resting-place.

He paused then, and stood quite still, listening.  I knew it, though I could not see him.  I ran the fingers of my right hand through the loose pebbles about me, and his ear caught the slight noise.  In a moment I heard his strong feet coming across them toward me.

“Mon Dieu! mam’zelle,” he exclaimed, “what has happened to you?”

I tried to smile as his honest, brown face bent over me, full of alarm.  It was so great a relief to see a face like his after that long, weary agony, for it had been agony to me, who did not know what bodily pain was like.  But in trying to smile I felt my lips drawn, and my eyes blinded with tears.