The yellow book: an illustrated quarterly (3.1894)

Jeanne-Marie

By Leila Macdonald

I
T EANNE-MARIE lived aione in the white cottage at the far end of
the village street.
It was a long narrow street of tall houses, stretching each side
of the white shining road, for two hundred yards or more. A
street that was cool and shadeful even in the shadeless summer
days, when the sun burned most hotly, when the broad roads
dazzled between their avenues of plane-tree and poplar, and the
mountains disappeared from the horizon in the blue haze of
heat.
From her little garden Jeanne-Marie liked to look at the
mountains each morning, and, when for two or three days follow-
ing they were not to be seen, she would shake her head reproach-
fully, as at the failing of old friends.
" My boys, Jeanne-Marie is only thirty-seven," Bourdet the
innkeeper said to his companions, as they sat, one May afternoon,
smoking under the chestnut-trees in front of the cafe. They all
looked up as he spoke, and watched Jeanne-Marie, as she walked
slowly past them to her cottage.
" Bourdet has been paying court," said Leguillon, the fat, red-
faced