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drink a lot of cognac and soda and pour out his feelings, how his work disgusted him, how a correspondent couldn't get to see anything anymore, how he had three or four censorships on his neck al the time and had to send out prepared stuff that was al a pack of dirty lies every word of it, how a man lost his self-respect doing things like that year after year, how a news-paperman had been little better than a skunk before the war, but that now there wasn't anything low enough you could cal him. Eveline would try to cheer him up tel ing him that when the war was over he ought to write a book like Le Feu and real y tel the truth about it. "But the war won't ever be over . . . too damn profitable, do you get me? Back home they're coining money, the British are coining money; even the French, look at Bordeaux and Toulouse and Marseil es coining money and the goddam politicians, al of 'em got bank accounts in Amsterdam or Barcelona, the sons of bitches." Then he'd take her hand and get a crying jag and promise that if it did end he'd get back his selfrespect and write the great novel he felt he had in him. Late that fal Eveline came home one evening tramp-ing through the mud and the foggy dusk to find that Eleanor had a French soldier to tea. She was glad to see him, because she was always complaining that she wasn't getting to know any French people, nothing but profes-sional relievers and Red Cross women who were just too tiresome; but it was some moments before she realized it was Maurice Mil et. She wondered how she could have

-218-fal en for him even when she was a kid, he looked so middleaged and pasty and oldmaidish in his stained blue uniform. His large eyes with their girlish long lashes had heavy violet rings under them. Eleanor evidently thought he was wonderful stil , and drank up his talk about l'élan suprème du sacrifice and l'harmonie mysterieuse de la mort. He was a stretcherbearer in a basehospital at Nancy, had become very religious and had almost forgotten his English. When they asked him about his painting he shrugged his shoulders and wouldn't answer. At supper he ate very little and drank only water. He stayed til late in the evening tel ing them about miraculous conversions of unbelievers, extreme unction on the firing line, a vision of the young Christ he'd seen walking among the wounded in a dressingstation during a gasattack. Après la guerre he was going into a monastery. Trappist perhaps. After he left Eleanor said it had been the most inspiring evening she'd ever had in her life; Eveline didn't argue with her. Maurice came back one other afternoon before his perme expired bringing a young writer who was working at the Quai d'Orsay, a tal young Frenchman with pink cheeks who looked like an English publicschool boy, whose name was Raoul Lemonnier. He seemed to prefer to speak

English than French. He'd been at the front for two years in the Chasseurs Alpins and had been reformé on account of his lungs or his uncle who was a minister he couldn't say which. It was al very boring, he said. He thought tennis was ripping, though, and went out to St. Cloud to row every afternoon. Eleanor discovered that what she'd been wanting al fal had been a game of tennis. He said he liked English and American women because they liked sport. Here every woman thought you wanted to go to bed with her right away;

"Love is very boring," he said. He and Eveline stood in the window talking about cocktails (he adored American drinks) and looked out at the last purple shreds of dusk settling over Nôtre Dâme and

-219-the Seine, while Eleanor and Maurice sat in the dark in the little salon talking about St. Francis of Assisi. She asked him to dinner.

The next morning Eleanor said she thought she was

going to become a Catholic. On their way to the office she made Eveline stop into Nôtre Dâme with her to hear

mass and they both lit candles for Maurice's safety at the front before what Eveline thought was a just too tiresome-looking virgin near the main door. But it was impressive al the same, the priests moaning and the lights