are trying to make themselves appear so?  Up to the last moment they powder and paint, and try to make themselves different from what age has made them.  If their hair was black it grows blacker—­if red, it is more red.  But there is no longer any gray hair in Paris—­it is out of fashion.  That is the reason why I think your mother’s pretty silver curls so lovely and ‘distingues’.  I kiss them every night for you, after I have kissed them for myself.

   “Have a good voyage, come back soon, and take care of yourself, dear
   Fred.”

The young sailor read this letter over and over again.  The more he read it the more it puzzled him.  Most certainly he felt that Jacqueline gave him a great proof of confidence when she spoke to him of some mysterious unhappiness, an unhappiness of which it was evident her stepmother was the cause.  He could see that much; but he was infinitely far from suspecting the nature of the woes to which she alluded.  Poor Jacqueline!  He pitied her without knowing what for, with a great outburst of sympathy, and an honest desire to do anything in the world to make her happy.  Was it really possible that she could have been enduring any grief that summer when she had seemed so madly gay, so ready for a little flirtation?  Young girls must be very skilful in concealing their inmost feelings!  When he was unhappy he had it out by himself, he took refuge in solitude, he wanted to be done with existence.  Everybody knew when anything went wrong with him.  Why could not Jacqueline have let him know more plainly what it was that troubled her, and why could she not have shown a little tenderness toward him, instead of assuming, even when she said the kindest things to him, her air of mockery?  And then, though she might pretend not to find Lizerolles stupid, he could see that she was bored there.  Yet why had she chosen to stay at Lizerolles rather than go to Italy?

Alas! how that little pink letter made him reflect and guess, and turn things over in his mind, and wish himself at the devil—­that little pink letter which he carried day and night on his breast and made it crackle as it lay there, when he laid his hand on the satin folds so near his heart!  It had an odor of sweet violets which seemed to him to overpower the smell of pitch and of salt water, to fill the air, to perfume everything.

“That young fellow has the instincts of a sailor,” said his superior officers when they saw him standing in attitudes which they thought denoted observation, though with him it was only reverie.  He would stand with his eyes fixed upon some distant point, whence he fancied he could see emerging from the waves a small, brown, shining head, with long hair streaming behind, the head of a girl swimming, a girl he knew so well.

“One can see that he takes an interest in nautical phenomena, that he is heart and soul in his profession, that he cares for nothing else.  Oh, he’ll make a sailor!  We may be sure of that!”