Cooking and philosophy do not go together."
"On the contrary, they go very well," he said, "but I will not roast your chicken in my cell.
We will build a wood fire in the open, on the shores of the creek, and I will roast your chicken for you there.
But you must eat it in your fingers.
And there will be no candle-light, only the light of the fire."
"And perhaps the night-jar you told me about will not be silent," she said.
"Perhaps!" He smiled at her across the table, and she had a sudden vision of the fire they would build, on the shore beside the water, and how the flames would hiss and crackle in the air, and how the good burnt smell of roasting chicken would come to their nostrils. The cooking would absorb him, even as his drawing of the heron absorbed him yesterday, and his planning of piracy would do tomorrow.
She noticed, for the first time, that William had left them, and rising from the table she blew the candles, and led the way into the salon.
"Smoke, if you wish," she said, and there, on the mantelpiece before him, he recognised his jar of tobacco.
"The perfect hostess," he said.
She sat down, but he went on standing by the mantelpiece, filling his pipe, looking about the room as he did so.
"It is all very different from the winter," he said.
"When I came then, the covers shrouded the furniture, and there were no flowers.
There was something austere about the room.
You have changed all that."
"All empty houses are like sepulchres," she said.
"Ah, yes - but I don't mean that Navron would have remained a sepulchre, had anyone else broken the silence."
She did not answer. She was not sure what he meant.
For a while there was silence between them, and then he said,
"What brought you to Navron, in the end?"
She played with a tassel of the cushion behind her head.
"You told me yesterday that Lady St. Columb was something of a celebrity," she said, "that you had heard gossip of her escapades.
Perhaps I was tired of Lady St. Columb, and wanted to become somebody else."
"In other words - you wished to escape?"
"That is what William told me you would say."
"William has experience.
He has seen me do the same sort of thing.
Once there was a man called Jean-Benoit Aubery, who had estates in Brittany, money, friends, responsibilities, and William was his servant.
And William's master became weary of Jean-Benoit Aubery, and so he turned into a pirate, and built La Mouette."
"And is it really possible to become somebody else?"
"I have found it so."
"And you are happy?"
"I am content."
"What is the difference?"
"Between happiness and contentment?
Ah, there you have me. It is not easy to put into words.
Contentment is a state of mind and body when the two work in harmony, and there is no friction.
The mind is at peace, and the body also. The two are sufficient to themselves.
Happiness is elusive - coming perhaps once in a lifetime - and approaching ecstasy."
"Not a continuous thing, like contentment?"
"No, not a continuous thing.
But there are, after all, degrees of happiness.
I remember, for instance, one particular moment after I became a pirate, and I fought my first action, against one of your merchant ships.
I was successful, and towed my prize into port.
That was a good moment, exhilarating, happy.
I had achieved the thing I had set myself to do, of which I had been uncertain."
"Yes," she said. "Yes - I understand that."
"And there have been other moments too.
The pleasure felt after I have made a drawing, and I look at the drawing, and it has the shape and form of what I meant.
That is another degree of happiness."