“It's well paid; but you get tired of being in one place all the time. It's not as it is in Brittany....” Marcel paused. He sat, rocking a little on the stool, holding on to the seat between his legs. A curious brilliance came into his grey eyes. “There,” he went on in a soft voice, “it is so quiet in the fields, and from every hill you look at the sea.... I like that, don't you?” he turned to Andrews, with a smile. “You are lucky to be free,” said Andrews bitterly. He felt as if he would burst into tears. “But you will be demobilized soon; the butchery is over. You will go home to your family. That will be good, hein?” “I wonder. It's not far enough away. Restless!” “What do you expect?” A fine rain was falling. They climbed in on the potato sacks and the horse started a jog trot; its lanky brown shanks glistened a little from the rain. “Do you come out this way often?” asked Marcel. “I shall. It's the nicest place near Paris.” “Some Sunday you must come and I'll take you round. The Castle is very fine. And then there is Malmaison, where the great Emperor lived with the Empress Josephine.” Andrews suddenly remembered Jeanne's card. This was Wednesday. He pictured her dark figure among the crowd of the pavement in front of the Cafe de Rohan. Of course it had to be that way. Despair, so helpless as to be almost sweet, came over him. “And girls,” he said suddenly to Marcel, “are they pretty round here?” Marcel shrugged his shoulders. “It's not women that we lack, if a fellow has money,” he said. Andrews felt a sense of shame, he did not exactly know why. “My brother writes that in South America the women are very brown and very passionate,” added Marcel with a wistful smile. “But travelling and reading books, that's what I like.... But look, if you want to take the train back to Paris....” Marcel pulled up the horse to a standstill. “If you want to take the train, cross that field by the foot path and keep right along the road to the left till you come to the river. There's a ferryman. The town's Herblay, and there's a station.... And any Sunday before noon I'll be at 3 rue des Eveques, Reuil. You must come and we'll take a walk together.” They shook hands, and Andrews strode off across the wet fields. Something strangely sweet and wistful that he could not analyse lingered in his mind from Marcel's talk. Somewhere, beyond everything, he was conscious of the great free rhythm of the sea.