“I'll tell you about Chartres later,” said Andrews gruffly. “It has been superb, one of the biggest weeks in my life, walking all day under the sun, with the road like a white ribbon in the sun over the hills and along river banks, where there were yellow irises blooming, and through woods full of blackbirds, and with the dust in a little white cloud round my feet, and all the time walking towards you, walking towards you.” “And la Reine de Saba, how is it coming?” “I don't know. It's a long time since I thought of it.... You have been here long?” “Hardly a week. But what are you going to do?” “I have a room overlooking the river in a house owned by a very fat woman with a very red face and a tuft of hair on her chin....” “Madame Boncour.” “Of course. You must know everybody.... It's so small.” “And you're going to stay here a long time?” “Almost forever, and work, and talk to you; may I use your piano now and then?” “How wonderful!” Genevieve Rod jumped to her feet. Then she stood looking at him, leaning against one of the twisted stems of the vines, so that the broad leaves fluttered about her face, A white cloud, bright as silver, covered the sun, so that the hairy young leaves and the wind-blown grass of the lawn took on a silvery sheen. Two white butterflies fluttered for a second about the arbor. “You must always dress like that,” she said after a while. Andrews laughed. “A little cleaner, I hope,” he said. “But there can't be much change. I have no other clothes and ridiculously little money.” “Who cares for money?” cried Genevieve. Andrews fancied he detected a slight affectation in her tone, but he drove the idea from his mind immediately. “I wonder if there is a farm round here where I could get work.” “But you couldn't do the work of a farm labourer,” cried Genevieve, laughing. “You just watch me.” “It'll spoil your hands for the piano.” “I don't care about that; but all that's later, much later. Before anything else I must finish a thing I am working on. There is a theme that came to me when I was first in the army, when I was washing windows at the training camp.” “How funny you are, Jean! Oh, it's lovely to have you about again. But you're awfully solemn today. Perhaps it's because I made you kiss me.” “But, Genevieve, it's not in one day that you can unbend a slave's back, but with you, in this wonderful place.... Oh, I've never seen such sappy richness of vegetation! And think of it, a week's walking first across those grey rolling uplands, and then at Blois down into the haze of richness of the Loire.... D'you know Vendome? I came by a funny little town from Vendome to Blois. You see, my feet.... And what wonderful cold baths I've had on the sand banks of the Loire.... No, after a while the rhythm of legs all being made the same length on drill fields, the hopeless caged dullness will be buried deep in me by the gorgeousness of this world of yours!”