“Music should be made in the country, when the sap is rising in the trees.” “'D'apres nature,' as the rabbit man said.” “Who's the rabbit man?” “A very pleasant person,” said Andrews, bubbling with laughter. “You shall meet him some day. He sells little stuffed rabbits that jump, outside the Cafe de Rohan.” “Here we are.... Thank you for coming home with me.” “But how soon. Are you sure it is the house? We can't have got there as soon as this.” “Yes, it's my house,” said Genevieve Rod laughing. She held out her hand to him and he shook it eagerly. The latchkey clicked in the door. “Why don't you have a cup of tea with us here tomorrow?” she said. “With pleasure.” The big varnished door with its knocker in the shape of a ring closed behind her. Andrews walked away with a light step, feeling jolly and exhilarated. As he walked down the mist-filled quai towards the Place St. Michel, his ears were filled with the lisping gurgle of the river past the piers of the bridges. Walters was asleep. On the table in his room was a card from Jeanne. Andrews read the card holding it close to the candle. “How long it is since I saw you!” it read. “I shall pass the Cafe de Rohan Wednesday at seven, along the pavement opposite the Magazin du Louvre.” It was a card of Malmaison. Andrews flushed. Bitter melancholy throbbed through him. He walked languidly to the window and looked out into the dark court. A window below his spilled a warm golden haze into the misty night, through which he could make out vaguely some pots of ferns standing on the wet flagstones. From somewhere came a dense smell of hyacinths. Fragments of thought slipped one after another through his mind. He thought of himself washing windows long ago at training camp, and remembered the way the gritty sponge scraped his hands. He could not help feeling shame when he thought of those days. “Well, that's all over now,” he told himself. He wondered, in a half-irritated way, about Genevieve Rod. What sort of a person was she? Her face, with its wide eyes and pointed chin and the reddish-chestnut hair, unpretentiously coiled above the white forehead, was very vivid in his mind, though when he tried to remember what it was like in profile, he could not. She had thin hands, with long fingers that ought to play the piano well. When she grew old would she be yellow-toothed and jolly, like her mother? He could not think of her old; she was too vigorous; there was too much malice in her passionately-restrained gestures. The memory of her faded, and there came to his mind Jeanne's overworked little hands, with callous places, and the tips of the fingers grimy and scarred from needlework. But the smell of hyacinths that came up from the mist-filled courtyard was like a sponge wiping all impressions from his brain. The dense sweet smell in the damp air made him feel languid and melancholy.