Sometime, when opportunity offered, I would ask Jeanne Falla.

She would certainly know all about her own husband's family.

Whether she would tell me was quite another matter.
Up to now, you see, Carette, as Carette, had sufficed, but now Carette was growing out of herself and her surroundings, and it was the why and wherefore of this that my thoughts went in search of.

For if Carette grew out of her surroundings she might grow beyond me, and it behoved me to see to it, for she had grown to be a part of my life, and life without her would be a poor thing indeed.
And all these things I used to turn over and over in my heart during the sultry night-watches in the West Indies, when the heat lightnings gleamed incessantly all round the horizon, and it was too hot to sleep even when off duty; and during the grimmer watches round about Newfoundland, with the fog as thick as wool inside and outside one, and the smell of the floating bergs in the air; and most of all when we were plunging homeward as fast as we could make it, and the call of Carette drew my heart faster than my body, till my body fairly ached for sight and sound of her..