And Gray--though only one-fourth English--how utterly British was that 'arrogant civilian,' as the '_poilus_' called him. Even his clothes, somehow, were British--no one knew who had given them to him; his short grey workman's jacket, brown dingy trousers, muffler and checked cap; his long, idle walk, his absolute _sans-gêne_, regardless of any one but himself; his tall, loose figure, with a sort of grace lurking somewhere in its slow, wandering movements, and long, thin fingers. That wambling, independent form might surely be seen any day outside a thousand British public-houses, in time of peace. His face, with its dust-coloured hair, projecting ears, grey eyes with something of the child in them, and something of the mule, and something of a soul trying to wander out of the forest of misfortune; his little, tip-tilted nose that never grew on pure-blooded Frenchman; under a scant moustache his thick lips, disfigured by infirmity of speech, whence passed so continually a dribble of saliva--sick British workman was stamped on him. Yet he was passionately fond of washing himself; his teeth, his head, his clothes. Into the frigid winter he would go, and stand at the '_Source_' half an hour at a time, washing and washing. It was a cause of constant irritation to Mignan that his '_phénomène_' would never come to time, on account of this disastrous habit; the hospital corridors resounded almost daily with the importuning of those shapeless lips for something clean--a shirt, a pair of drawers, a bath, a handkerchief. He had a fixity of purpose; not too much purpose, but so fixed.--Yes, he was English! For '_les deux phénomènes_' the soldiers, the servants, and the 'Powers' of the hospital--all were sorry; yet they could not understand to the point of quite forgiving their vagaries. The twain were outcast, wandering each in a dumb world of his own, each in the endless circle of one or two hopeless notions. It was irony--or the French system--which had ordered the Breton Roche to get well in a place whence he could see nothing flatter than a mountain, smell no sea, eat no fish. And God knows what had sent Gray there. His story was too vaguely understood, for his stumbling speech simply could not make it plain. '_Les Boches--ils vont en payer cher--les Boches_,' muttered fifty times a day, was the burden of his song. Those Boches had come into his village early in the war, torn him from his wife and his '_petite fille_.' Since then he had 'had fear,' been hungry, been cold, eaten grass; eyeing some fat little dog, he would leer and mutter: '_J'ai mangé cela, c'est bon!_' and with fierce triumph add: '_Ils ont faim, les Boches!_' The 'arrogant civilian' had never done his military service, for his infirmity, it seemed, had begun before the war.