He began questioning her: what was she doing in Amiens? and she replied briefly, not thinking of the words. She pushed aside her cup and rested one elbow on the table, her chin in her hand. She stared into his eyes, gray-brown, dilated by shell-fire, and reddened at the rims by gas, but full of feeling which she recognized at a glance as genuine. That feeling was concern for her welfare. She did not admit to herself, still less to him, that there was anything to be concerned about. But it warmed her in the depths of her heart, just as the liqueur he had ordered for her (with sweet cakes, and the way in which he did it showed his solicitude) warmed her stomach. It was true he was talking about himself. She knew in a moment that this was not egotism but English shyness. She answered him in a dream, rocking her body ever so slightly on her chair, as if she were nursing something. Indeed, she was--nursing some part of her spirit, bruised just as violently as her knees had been when the old horse fell down and threw her on to the pavé of the Lille road--for she had just been thrown out of her closed self-control, that hid unwelcome Truth even from herself, on to the bare realization of the long fast of two years, the sharp starvation of two months. Now he was talking about _her_, with the polite candor which had made her say, the first time she saw him, that he was “well brought up” and “willing.” More, he was inquiring about Georges. She was not surprised; that was all part of it. She heard herself, as another person, replying coolly: “He is dead!” and when pressed further: “He is dead for me.” She could have laughed aloud at the same time, not for joy, but from the steady mounting beat of her own heart. His concern was trebled. Her heart beat faster, not feverishly, steadily. She had thought of her trouble: “I’ll put an end to this!” She was putting an end to it! Then he actually touched her, and made sympathetic remarks. He was advising her not to frequent officers’ restaurants, and she replied she did not care. It was true. She cared for nothing at the moment, had never felt more light-hearted. He asked what she was going to do next. She wanted to laugh more than ever as she said, “Nothing!” He proposed a cinema. She assented delightedly, feeling as though she would have proposed it herself in a moment, it was so inevitable. She made a quick calculation. Cécile Blanquart and the other girls were at the office. Aunt Blanquart and the pork butcher’s wife, at whose house she lodged, would not be shopping in the main streets, rendered expensive by English custom. It was safe enough. Out in the street she stepped beside him with a pride which, she suddenly realized, she had never known. There are inconveniences about clandestine liaisons. She almost enjoyed the publicity. Fortified by coffee, cakes and brandy, as tall as he was to an inch or so, she seemed to float along on the wings of new-found comfort, effortless, smiling.