She did not venture to speak to Pierre, knowing that he would return some hard answer; and he dared not address his mother, knowing that in spite of himself he should speak violently.  He sat twitching the water-worn pebbles with the end of his cane, switching them and turning them over.  She, with a vague look in her eyes, had picked up three or four little stones and was slowly and mechanically dropping them from one hand into the other.  Then her unsettled gaze, wandering over the scene before her, discerned, among the weedy rocks, her son Jean fishing with Mme. Rosemilly.  She looked at them, watching their movements, dimly understanding, with motherly instinct, that they were talking as they did not talk every day.  She saw them leaning over side by side when they looked into the water, standing face to face when they questioned their hearts, then scrambled up the rock and seated themselves to come to an understanding.  Their figures stood out very sharply, looking as if they were alone in the middle of the wide horizon, and assuming a sort of symbolic dignity in that vast expanse of sky and sea and cliff.

Pierre, too, was looking at them, and a harsh laugh suddenly broke form his lips.  Without turning to him Mme. Roland said: 

“What is it?”

He spoke with a sneer.

“I am learning.  Learning how a man lays himself out to be cozened by his wife.”

She flushed with rage, exasperated by the insinuation she believed was intended.

“In whose name do you say that?”

“In Jean’s, by Heaven!  It is immensely funny to see those two.”

She murmured in a low voice, tremulous with feeling:  “O Pierre, how cruel you are!  That woman is honesty itself.  Your brother could not find a better.”

He laughed aloud, a hard, satirical laugh: 

“Ha! hah!  Hah!  Honesty itself!  All wives are honesty itself—­and all husbands are—­betrayed.”  And he shouted with laughter.

She made no reply, but rose, hastily went down the sloping beach, and at the risk of tumbling into one of the rifts hidden by the sea-weed, of breaking a leg or an arm, she hastened, almost running, plunging through the pools without looking, straight to her other son.

Seeing her approach, Jean called out: 

“Well, mother?  So you have made the effort?”

Without a word she seized him by the arm, as if to say:  “Save me, protect me!”

He saw her agitation, and greatly surprised he said: 

“How pale you are!  What is the matter?”

She stammered out: 

“I was nearly falling; I was frightened at the rocks.”

So then Jean guided her, supported her, explained the sport to her that she might take an interest in it.  But as she scarcely heeded him, and as he was bursting with the desire to confide in some one, he led her away and in a low voice said to her: 

“Guess what I have done!”