There remained one mattress over.
'You take that,' he said.
'I shall not sleep tonight.'
She shook her head.
'Nor I either.'
Half an hour later they were sitting side by side leaning against the wall, staring out of the barred window ahead of them.
It was practically dark within the room; outside the harbour showed faintly in the starlight and the last glow of evening.
It was still quite warm.
She said: 'They will examine us in the morning.
What shall we say?'
'There's only one thing we can say.
Tell them the exact truth.'
She considered this for a moment.
'We must not bring in Arvers, nor Loudeac or Quintin if we can avoid it.'
He agreed.
'They will ask where I got these clothes.
Can you say that you gave them to me?'
She nodded. 'That will do.
Also, I will say that I knew Focquet and arranged with him myself.'
She crossed to the young man, now half asleep, and spoke earnestly to him for a few minutes.
He grunted in agreement; the girl came back to Howard and sat down again.
'One more thing,' he said.
There is Marjan.
Shall I say that I picked him up on the road?'
She nodded.
'On the road before you came to Chartres.
I will see that he understands that.'
He said doubtfully: 'That should be all right so long as they don't cross-examine the children.'
They sat in silence for a long time after that.
Presently she stirred a little by him, shifting to a more comfortable position.
'Go and lie down, Nicole,' he said.
'You must get some sleep.'
'I do not want to sleep, monsieur,' she said.
'Truly I am better sitting here like this.'
'I've been thinking about things,' he said.
'I also have been thinking.'
He turned to her in the darkness.
'I am so very sorry to have brought you into all this trouble,' he said quietly.
'I did want to avoid that, and I thought that we were going to.'
She shrugged her shoulders.
'It does not matter.'
She hesitated.
'I have been thinking about different things to that.'
'What things?' he asked.
'When you introduced Focquet - you said I was your daughter-in-law.'
'I had to say something,' he remarked.
'And that's very nearly true."
In the dun light he looked into her eyes, smiling a little.
'Isn't it?'
'Is that how you think of me?'