Now, as she waited, her mind began to fill with unwanted memories, and she recalled how she had run away in the night from Mont Du Bane, the small fishing village of her birth on the Peninsule De Gaspe, escaping, she had felt, with the American named Keel, a salesman who passed that way twice a year to sell goods to M. Bidette le Garde-Magasin.

Four years ago, she remembered, but the bitter reveries were as vivid in her mind as if they had taken place yesterday. She had been sixteen, nearly seventeen, the fourth of nine children and by far the prettier of her three sisters, she knew. She recalled that even at twelve, when she had begun to develop her pubescent charms, the opposite sex had always been strongly attracted to her, especially the older men, and she had been pleased, taking pride in her long black hair and the hygiene of her teeth, realizing that if she were ever to be liberated from the destined weary bondage of becoming a fisherman's wife, these were the assets upon which she would have to trade.

The day she had met the American she was physically ripe, a sensually alluring young woman, while he was somewhere in his aging fifties. She had only to smile at him coquettishly to see his small eyes come alive with lecherous excitement, and as she tripped provocatively from M. Bidette's store she felt certain he would follow.

It was difficult to remember all the little lurid details now, even, difficult to recall his features… only a faceless, grey-haired, fat man… taller and bigger than Uncle Gaston in every respect, but certainly his parallel in villainy, she realized now. And how upset she'd been at first when she decided that he wasn't going to follow her, but by the time she'd reached the edge of the village he had come along in his car and offered her a ride.

She hadn't hesitated; instead, she'd climbed in and began an immediate conversation. He spoke French, which had made it that much easier for her to play the flirt with him, and when he'd reached over placing his big, heavy, hair-covered hand on her knee she had pretended at being excitedly flustered, while in truth her flesh had recoiled at his touch and she'd winced repugnantly within her flat little belly.