GUSTAVE FLAVELLE had a strong sense of humour. That was why his imprisonment in New Caledonia for political crimes, in company with his friend and compatriot Henri Rochefort, had been relieved of some of its deadly ennui and despair. It was how he managed to make friends among the libérés and récidivistes, as among the officers and gendarmes. It was why the corner of the island set apart for political prisoners, behind an ominous escarpment of sea and bayonets, was less dreary for all than it otherwise would have been; why Junie Cavour or La Grive the Cricket, as she was called, the sometime keeper of the secrets of Monsieur le Commandant, laughed in his face at an inspection one day, patted him on the shoulder and called him un beau garçon; why, perhaps, as a sequence, she came again under the very noses of the guards—for did she not always bear the Commandant's permission to go where she listed?—and said to him gaily and meaningly that the cage of the starling was not built for the eagle. It was why on the motionless, tropic sea, with but a cupful of water left for her, and no food at all for either, bereft of sail and helpless of arm, he had heart enough to say in a cheery, if thirstily arid voice: "Ah, Junie, ma chérie, you shall see! There will be land or a ship to-morrow, or the next day, truly!"
Junie Cavour sitting still and nerveless in the stern, only raised her head with a smiling languor, and waved her hand to her companion with an assent which was half protest, and said nothing. He continued: "Ma foi, what a mother France is! To-day she is the lover of those whom princes cherish; to-morrow she cherishes those who hate princes. It is a strange nation. Yesterday Paris said: 'Voilà! The pen of Gustave Flavelle; it is good': Now with droll distress she cries, 'Gustave Flavelle—ah, most execrable!' Well, it is no matter … I am free; that is much. Why am I free? Because Junie Cavour made one, two, three, many, guards, so blind!—and put out to sea with me on the night of the great banquet at the Hôtel du Gouverneur. Why was La Grive so minded to suffer the perils of the ocean, this thirst, this hunger, the sweating sun of the hurricane season, the malarial moon that pinches the face and leaves it glassy and cold, and the trembling chance of reaching land across these thousand leagues of misery, with Gustave Flavelle, the outlaw of France? Eh, bien, that is a question which Gustave Flavelle cannot answer. He is only so grateful! He kisses his hand—there! to Junie Cavour, and says, Mon sauveur!"
La Grive, pale of lip and weary of eye, but striking, and pathetically handsome still, moved her fingers slowly over the waves of her tawny hair, and with a wistfully playful motion of the head, replied: "You wish to know, mon ami? Well, for one thing, because that was misery there for me too. Monsieur le Commandant—you think? Faugh! I had him, so, around my finger. I was a power; the greatest in New Caledonia. I thought power would bring happiness. Ah, ah, that was amusing! Monsieur le Commandant was devoted—and jealous. He thought me wise in counsel, he applauded me when his foolish officers were stricken in their vanity—by me. But everything palled. I loved nothing of it. I hated them all, except the gendarmes and the prisoners. For one political prisoner I had much regret—much. He was gay and yet wise. He had been wise and yet gay. Years before I had laughed when he was folâtre, and cried when he was triste—in his books. That was when. … " . She paused; her lustrous eyes fixed abstractedly on the sickly horizon before her. There was silence for many moments. Gustave Flavelle, with his elbows on his knees and his chin in his hands, watched her. At last he said: "Yes, La Grive, that was—when—when?"
She slowly looked towards him, and replied: "When I was not La Grive. When I was young; when I was an exile in England—it seemed like that to me; when I earned my living by teaching good English girls what not to read in French. … Ah, how like farce it is! … But they were sweet and noble and I was good then too. … I taught them to read Gustave Flavelle. I wished some day that I might come to know him face to face, the young novelist: And I have. … So you see!"
She leaned back with a fluttering suspiration of breath and relapsed into silence. He shaded his eyes with his hand and scanned the circle of the horizon mechanically; then he turned and said: "What changed all that, Junie?"
Her hands suddenly clenched, her large eyes glowed until the dark rims of suffering round them were one with their dusky radiance. "Ah," she said, "you have discernment—well! … You have seen the fountains at Versailles in the sun—I was like that; the roses in the Bois de Boulogne on a fêtemon amiBien, mon