“All that's finished is for piano. I hope to orchestrate it eventually.... Oh, but it's really silly to talk this way. I don't know enough.... I need years of hard work before I can do anything.... And I have wasted so much time.... That is the most frightful thing. One has so few years of youth!” “There's the bell, we must scuttle back to our seats. Till the next intermission.” She slipped through the glass doors and disappeared. Andrews went back to his seat very excited, full of unquiet exultation. The first strains of the orchestra were pain, he felt them so acutely. After the last act they walked in silence down a dark street, hurrying to get away from the crowds of the Boulevards. When they reached the Avenue de l'Opera, she said: “Did you say you were going to stay in France?” “Yes, indeed, if I can. I am going tomorrow to put in an application for discharge in France.” “What will you do then?” “I shall have to find a job of some sort that will let me study at the Schola Cantorum. But I have enough money to last a little while.” “You are courageous.” “I forgot to ask you if you would rather take the Metro.” “No; let's walk.” They went under the arch of the Louvre. The air was full of a fine wet mist, so that every street lamp was surrounded by a blur of light. “My blood is full of the music of Debussy,” said Genevieve Rod, spreading out her arms. “It's no use trying to say what one feels about it. Words aren't much good, anyway, are they?” “That depends.” They walked silently along the quais. The mist was so thick they could not see the Seine, but whenever they came near a bridge they could hear the water rustling through the arches. “France is stifling,” said Andrews, all of a sudden. “It stifles you very slowly, with beautiful silk bands.... America beats your brains out with a policeman's billy.” “What do you mean?” she asked, letting pique chill her voice. “You know so much in France. You have made the world so neat....” “But you seem to want to stay here,” she said with a laugh. “It's that there's nowhere else. There is nowhere except Paris where one can find out things about music, particularly.... But I am one of those people who was not made to be contented.” “Only sheep are contented.” “I think I have been happier this month in Paris than ever before in my life. It seems six, so much has happened in it.” “Poissac is where I am happiest.” “Where is that?” “We have a country house there, very old and very tumbledown. They say that Rabelais used to come to the village. But our house is from later, from the time of Henri Quatre. Poissac is not far from Tours. An ugly name, isn't it? But to me it is very beautiful. The house has orchards all round it, and yellow roses with flushed centers poke themselves in my window, and there is a little tower like Montaigne's.” “When I get out of the army, I shall go somewhere in the country and work and work.”