Andrews's hands were cold. There was a nervous flutter in his wrists and in his chest. Inside of him was a great rift of light, infinitely vast and infinitely distant. Through it sounds poured from somewhere, so that he trembled with them to his finger tips, sounds modulated into rhythms that washed back and forth and crossed each other like sea waves in a cove, sounds clotted into harmonies. Behind everything the Queen of Sheba, out of Flaubert, held her fantastic hand with its long, gilded finger nails on his shoulder; and he was leaning forward over the brink of life. But the image was vague, like a shadow cast on the brilliance of his mind. The clock struck four. The white fluffy ball of the cat unrolled very slowly. Its eyes were very round and yellow. It put first one leg and then the other out before it on the tiled floor, spreading wide the pinkey-grey claws. Its tail rose up behind it straight as the mast of a ship. With slow processional steps the cat walked towards the door. The old brown man drank down the yellow liquid and smacked his lips twice, loudly, meditatively. Andrews raised his head, his blue eyes looking straight before him without seeing anything. Dropping the pencil, he leaned back against the wall and stretched his arms out. Taking the coffee bowl between his two hands, he drank s little. It was cold. He piled some jam on a piece of bread and ate it, licking a little off his fingers afterwards. Then he looked towards the old brown man and said: “On est bien ici, n'est ce pas, Monsieur Morue?” “Oui, on est bien ici,” said the old brown man in a voice so gruff it seemed to rattle. Very slowly he got to his feet. “Good. I am going to the barge,” he said. Then he called, “Chipette!” “Oui, m'sieu.” A little girl in a black apron with her hair in two tight pigtails that stood out behind her tiny bullet head as she ran, came through the door from the back part of the house. “There, give that to your mother,” said the old brown man, putting some coppers in her hand. “Oui, m'sieu.” “You'd better stay here where it's warm,” said Andrews yawning. “I have to work. It's only soldiers don't have to work,” rattled the old brown man. When the door opened a gust of raw air circled about the wine shop, and a roar of wind and hiss of sleet came from the slush-covered quai outside. The cat took refuge beside the stove, with its back up and its tail waving. The door closed and the old brown man's silhouette, slanted against the wind, crossed the grey oblong of the window. Andrews settled down to work again. “But you work a lot a lot, don't you; M'sieu Jean?” said Chipette, putting her chin on the table beside the books and looking up into his eyes with little eyes like black beads. “I wonder if I do.” “When I'm grown up I shan't work a bit. I'll drive round in a carriage.” Andrews laughed. Chipette looked at him for a minute and then went into the other room carrying away the empty coffee bowl.