She gleamed like an apparition against the gray afternoon light. It was late July but wet and cold, as is often the case along this stretch of the Breton coast. A perennial gloom emanated from the abbey’s dark, medieval stones; low-lying clouds obscured the pinnacle of its famous spire.The tourists were Americans, big and ruddy and loud and badly dressed in their usual array of sports paraphernalia and baseball caps—one of the package groups off the buses parked in an endless line along the causeway to the mainland. The pale young woman, clearly French, didn’t belong with them, wasn’t a part of their group, but seemed in the grip of a lethargy that prevented her from breaking away. Perhaps she had allowed herself to be drawn along at their shuffling pace rather then fight through the crush to the Gothic gates, to the causeway and the car park and the salt meadows and the tidal flats beyond, to France, a misty blue outline in the near distance. The Americans looked warm in their thick sweatshirts emblazoned with colorful logos.
