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Bakkus, who had maintained a discreet silence hitherto, remarked: "Unless Andrew's head is particularly thick, he'll get a sunstroke in this blazing sun." "That's true," cried Elodie and, rising with a great scraping of chair, she rushed to the balustrade and addressed him shrilly. "Mais dis donc Andre, tu veux attraper un coup de soleil?" We heard his voice in reply: "Nous rentrons."
When he propounded the financial situation, Elodie did not understand. "I must work," said he. "But Generals don't work," she protested incredulously. Even the war had developed little of the Marseilles gamine's conceptions of life. A General she knew no grades a modest Brigadier ranking second only to a Field Marshal was a General. He commanded an army.
His pre-war savings had amounted to no fortune, and in spite of Elodie's economy and occasional earnings with her birds, they were well-nigh spent. The dearness of everything! Elodie wrung her hands. Where once you had change out of a franc, now you had none out of a five-franc note. He could still carry on comfortably for a year, but that would be the end of it.
"I ought to have taken it for granted." "We give entertainments together," said Elodie. "He sings and I take the birds. Ah! the poilus. They are like children. When Riquiqui takes off Paulette's cap they twist themselves up with laughing. Il faut voir ca." This was all news to Andrew, and it delighted him beyond measure.
In the shade of the shrubbery he gave her a long, ardent kiss, which she received with head thrown back and, clasped in Évariste's arms, felt all her flesh melt like wax. They went on talking a long time of themselves, forgetful of the universe. Évariste abounded mainly in vague, high thoughts, which filled Élodie with ecstasy.
He felt about him the dim awe of the church, he saw the tapers burning at head and foot, the clear, calm face of the dead, smiling faintly that at last it should be no more disturbed. So had he looked all one night and all one day in the long time ago. The Factor stretched his arms out to the figure on the couch, but he called upon his wife, gone these twenty years. "Elodie!
One of them enclosed a full-length photograph of his future bride. Fate had certainly been kind to him by granting his one expressed wish. The Princess Elodie was what he had desired, "quite six-foot tall."
Years ago I told him he ought to be a sergeant in a barrack square." "Just so!" cried Elodie. "Look at him now. Here he is as soft as two pennyworth of butter. But in the theatre, if things do not go quite as he wants them oh la la! It is Right turn Quick march! Brr! And I who speak have to do just the same as the others." "I know," said Bakkus. "A Prussian without bowels. Ah, my poor Elodie!
He had spoken truly. He had been faithful to her in that he had fled from divine temptation. For her sake he had put the other woman and the glory that she signified out of his life. All through the delicious intercourse, Elodie had hung at the bottom of his heart, a dead-weight, maybe, but one which he could not in honour or common humanity cut off.
The street was empty, darkening with the shadows of approaching night; the lamplighter went by with his cresset, and Gamelin muttered to himself: "Yes, to the death!" By nine in the morning Évariste reached the gardens of the Luxembourg, to find Élodie already there seated on a bench waiting for him.
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