He had made up his mind: he was leaving by bus: Paris: bus to Moire: then rejoin the Corps. Gulping his coffee he told his future to go to hell. But there was something in the coffee, in the taste and smell of it, that tied in with the antiquity of the room, his past, the Chopin bust that was watching, mistrusting him. A second cup. And the coffee brought to mind the room where he had been born ... voices ... faces. It seemed to him he heard his mother. Smoking a cigarette, he wandered about, annoyed by the fireless fireplaces and their sense of accusation. A copy of _Combat_ lay on a chair: in a matter of hours life would become combat: soon life would be a thing of the past, like a newspaper, like a comic strip. The cat would jump off the sofa and disappear forever. The skull would revolve round and round inside the tank helmet. He was dressing in his greasy mechanic’s clothes when Jean appeared. "Orville," she said, scared. "Orville." She had never seen his face so tragic. "What’s happened?" she asked. "I’m leaving ... you know I had to go ... tomorrow anyway." "Claude phoned me ... he said ... why?..." "Why," he repeated, without making it an interrogation, and glared at her. She perched on the foot of his bed and her raincoat fell away from her shoulders, pinioning her hands. Her cheeks, flushed by cold and anxiety, were red. "Talk to me," she said. "There’s nothing to talk about. I’m wearing these filthy clothes ... I have my ID ... I’ll get to Paris on the bus ... there are fewer checks by the Moire route ... so..." Leaning against his chest-of-drawers, he hunted through his pockets for his lighter: no, it was in his jacket. His fingers touched his jackknife. The feel of it helped. "It’s quite simple," he said. "I can’t go on with you. I slept with a girl last night at an inn. It’s back to the Corps. I’m trapped. I haven’t guts enough to desert, so ... at the best ... we had two days..." Jeannette rubbed her face and rubbed her hand over her eyes; she remembered crude things Orville had said; her love for him had died down, then welled up; she held out her lighter as he continued poking-poking through his pockets. "Here, Orv..." As he bent over the flame she said: "I’m sorry I wasn’t enough for you." "It wasn’t that." Or was it? "What was it then?" "I ... I have to go ... I..." "I love you," she said. "But I can’t love you," he protested. "Are you ill?" "Perhaps ... another time ... maybe the war will end ... who knows what is going to happen!" He stifled a desire to say that he had a premonition of tragedy--that was nothing new in his life. "You told me you loved me, Orv." "I wasn’t lying."