“We tied up the uniform with some stones, and threw it overboard,” said Rosaline, jabbing him in the shoulder to draw his attention. “That was a good idea.” “Are you going to get up? It's nearly time to eat. How you have slept.” “But I haven't anything to put on,” said Andrews, laughing, and waved a bare arm above the bedclothes. “Wait, I'll find something of the old man's. Say, do all Americans have skin so white as that? Look.” She put her brown hand, with its grimed and broken nails, on Andrews's arm, that was white with a few silky yellow hairs. “It's because I'm blond,” said Andrews. “There are plenty of blond Frenchmen, aren't there?” Rosaline ran off giggling, and came back in a moment with a pair of corduroy trousers and a torn flannel shirt that smelt of pipe tobacco. “That'll do for now,” she said. “It's warm today for April. Tonight we'll buy you some clothes and shoes. Where are you going?” “By God, I don't know.” “We're going to Havre for cargo.” She put both hands to her head and began rearranging her straggling rusty-colored hair. “Oh, my hair,” she said, “it's the water, you know. You can't keep respectable-looking on these filthy barges. Say, American, why don't you stay with us a while? You can help the old man run the boat.” He found suddenly that her eyes were looking into his with trembling eagerness. “I don't know what to do,” he said carelessly. “I wonder if it's safe to go on deck.” She turned away from him petulantly and led the way up the ladder. “Oh, v'la le camarade,” cried the old man who was leaning with all his might against the long tiller of the barge. “Come and help me.” The barge was the last of a string of four that were describing a wide curve in the midst of a reach of silvery river full of glittering patches of pale, pea-green lavender, hemmed in on either side by frail blue roots of poplars. The sky was a mottled luminous grey with occasional patches, the color of robins' eggs. Andrews breathed in the dank smell of the river and leaned against the tiller when he was told to, answering the old man's curt questions. He stayed with the tiller when the rest of them went down to the cabin to eat. The pale colors and the swishing sound of the water and the blue-green banks slipping by and unfolding on either hand, were as soothing as his deep sleep had been. Yet they seemed only a veil covering other realities, where men stood interminably in line and marched with legs made all the same length on the drill field, and wore the same clothes and cringed before the same hierarchy of polished belts and polished puttees and stiff-visored caps, that had its homes in vast offices crammed with index cards and card catalogues; a world full of the tramp of marching, where cold voices kept saying:--“Teach him how to salute.” Like a bird in a net, Andrews's mind struggled to free itself from the obsession.