“You see, I was arrested at Chartres and sent to a labor battalion, the equivalent for your army prison, without being able to get word to my commanding officer in the School Detachment....” He paused. A bird was singing in the willow tree. The sun was under a cloud; beyond the long pale green leaves that fluttered ever so slightly in the wind, the sky was full of silvery and cream-colored clouds, with here and there a patch the color of a robin's egg. Andrews began laughing softly. “But, Genevieve, how silly those words are, those pompous, efficient words: detachment, battalion, commanding officer. It would have all happened anyway. Things reached the breaking point; that was all. I could not submit any longer to the discipline.... Oh, those long Roman words, what millstones they are about men's necks! That was silly, too; I was quite willing to help in the killing of Germans, I had no quarrel with, out of curiosity or cowardice.... You see, it has taken me so long to find out how the world is. There was no one to show me the way.” He paused as if expecting her to speak. The bird in the willow tree was still singing. Suddenly a dangling twig blew aside a little so that Andrews could see him--a small grey bird, his throat all puffed out with song. “It seems to me,” he said very softly, “that human society has been always that, and perhaps will be always that: organizations growing and stifling individuals, and individuals revolting hopelessly against them, and at last forming new societies to crush the old societies and becoming slaves again in their turn....” “I thought you were a socialist,” broke in Genevieve sharply, in a voice that hurt him to the quick, he did not know why. “A man told me at the labor battalion,” began Andrews again, “that they'd tortured a friend of his there once by making him swallow lighted cigarettes; well, every order shouted at me, every new humiliation before the authorities, was as great an agony to me. Can't you understand?” His voice rose suddenly to a tone of entreaty. She nodded her head. They were silent. The willow leaves shivered in a little wind. The bird had gone. “But tell me about the swimming part of it. That sounds exciting.” “We were working unloading cement at Passy--cement to build the stadium the army is presenting to the French, built by slave labor, like the pyramids.” “Passy's where Balzac lived. Have you ever seen his house there?” “There was a boy working with me, the Kid, 'le gosse,' it'd be in French. Without him, I should never have done it. I was completely crushed.... I suppose that he was drowned.... Anyway, we swam under water as far as we could, and, as it was nearly dark, I managed to get on a barge, where a funny anarchist family took care of me. I've never heard of the Kid since. Then I bought these clothes that amuse you so, Genevieve, and came back to Paris to find you, mainly.” “I mean as much to you as that?” whispered Genevieve.