The two women did not listen.  Torpid with comfort and impressed by the sight of the ocean covered with vessels rushing to and fro like wild beasts about their den, they sat speechless, somewhat awed by the soothing and gorgeous sunset.  Roland alone talked on without end; he was one of those whom nothing can disturb.  Women, whose nerves are more sensitive, sometimes feel, without knowing why, that the sound of useless speech is as irritating as an insult.

Pierre and Jean, who had calmed down, were rowing slowly, and the Pearl was making for the harbour, a tiny thing among those huge vessels.

When they came alongside of the quay, Papagris, who was waiting there, gave his hand to the ladies to help them out, and they took the way into the town.  A large crowd, the crowd which haunts the pier every day at high tide—­was also drifting homeward.  Mme. Roland and Mme. Rosemilly led the way, followed by the three men.  As they went up the Rue de Paris they stopped now and then in front of a milliner’s or a jeweller’s shop, to look at a bonnet or an ornament; then after making their comments they went on again.  In front of the Place de la Bourse Roland paused, as he did every day, to gaze at the docks full of vessels—­the Bassin du Commerce, with other docks beyond, where the huge hulls lay side by side, closely packed in rows, four or five deep.  And masts innumerable; along several kilometres of quays the endless masts, with their yards, poles, and rigging, gave this great gap in the heart of the town the look of a dead forest.  Above this leafless forest the gulls were wheeling, and watching to pounce, like a falling stone, on any scraps flung overboard; a sailor boy, fixing a pulley to a cross-beam, looked as if he had gone up there bird’s-nesting.

“Will you dine with us without any sort of ceremony, just that we may end the day together?” said Mme. Roland to her friend.

“To be sure I will, with pleasure; I accept equally without ceremony.  It would be dismal to go home and be alone this evening.”

Pierre, who had heard, and who was beginning to be restless under the young woman’s indifference, muttered to himself:  “Well, the widow is taking root now, it would seem.”  For some days past he had spoken of her as “the widow.”  The word, harmless in itself, irritated Jean merely by the tone given to it, which to him seemed spiteful and offensive.

The three men spoke not another word till they reached the threshold of their own house.  It was a narrow one, consisting of a ground-floor and two floors above, in the Rue Belle-Normande.  The maid, Josephine, a girl of nineteen, a rustic servant-of-all-work at low wages, gifted to excess with the startled animal expression of a peasant, opened the door, went up stairs at her master’s heels to the drawing-room, which was on the first floor, and then said: 

“A gentleman called—­three times.”