At last his hand, groping over the table, closed on the matchbox. The match's red and white flicker dazzled him. He blinked his eyes; the lashes were still full of raindrops. When he had lit a candle and set it amongst the music papers upon the table, he tore off his dripping clothes. “I just met the most charming girl, Walters,” Andrews stood naked beside the pile of his clothes, rubbing himself with a towel. “Gee! I was wet.... But she was the most charming person I've met since I've been in Paris.” “I thought you said you let the girls alone.” “Whores, I must have said.” “Well! Any girl you could pick up on the street....” “Nonsense!” “I guess they are all that way in this damned country.... God, it will do me good to see a nice sweet wholesome American girl.” Andrews did not answer. He blew out the light and got into bed. “But I've got a new job,” Walters went on. “I'm working in the school detachment office.” “Why the hell do that? You came here to take courses in the Sorbonne, didn't you?” “Sure. I go to most of them now. But in this army I like to be in the middle of things, see? Just so they can't put anything over on me.” “There's something in that.” “There's a damn lot in it, boy. The only way is to keep in right and not let the man higher up forget you.... Why, we may start fighting again. These damn Germans ain't showin' the right spirit at all... after all the President's done for them. I expect to get my sergeantcy out of it anyway.” “Well, I'm going to sleep,” said Andrews sulkily. John Andrews sat at a table outside the cafe de Rohan. The sun had just set on a ruddy afternoon, flooding everything with violet-blue light and cold greenish shadow. The sky was bright lilac color, streaked with a few amber clouds. The lights were on in all the windows of the Magazin du Louvre opposite, so that the windows seemed bits of polished glass in the afterglow. In the colonnade of the Palais Royal the shadows were deepening and growing colder. A steady stream of people poured in and out of the Metro. Green buses stuffed with people kept passing. The roar of the traffic and the clatter of footsteps and the grumble of voices swirled like dance music about Andrews's head. He noticed all at once that the rabbit man stood in front of him, a rabbit dangling forgotten at the end of its rubber tube. “Et ca va bien? le commerce,” said Andrews. “Quietly, quietly,” said the rabbit man, distractedly making the rabbit turn a somersault at his feet. Andrews watched the people going into the Metro. “The gentleman amuses himself in Paris?” asked the rabbit man timidly. “Oh, yes; and you?” “Quietly,” the rabbit man smiled. “Women are very beautiful at this hour of the evening,” he said again in his very timid tone. “There is nothing more beautiful than this moment of the evening... in Paris.” “Or Parisian women.” The eyes of the rabbit man glittered. “Excuse me, sir,” he went on. “I must try and sell some rabbits.”