"I shan't tell you."

(She was thinking: "Love! how kind you are to be troubled because I have
done something that is ugly!")

She went on:

"You are so kind. Thank you."

(He looked at her with astonished eyes.)

"Don't try to understand," said she, tapping him softly on his hand....
"There, let's talk of something else...."

"Yes. But one word more.... Still, I could wish to know.... Tell me
(and don't be hurt).... Are you at the present moment a bit strapped?"

"No, no, I told you that just now, because there have been now and then
hard times. But now it goes much better. Mama has found a situation
where she is well paid."

"Your mother is at work?"

"Yes, in a munitions factory. She gets twelve francs a day. It's a
fortune."

"In a factory! A war factory!"

"Yes."

"Why, it's frightful!"

"Oh, well! One takes what offers!"

"Luce! but if you, you should have such an offer?..."

"Oh, me? You see yourself, I just daub. Ah! You perceive now that I have
good reason to make my smears!"

"But if it were necessary to have money and there were no other way than
to work in one of those factories that produce bomb-shells, would you
go?"

"If it were necessary to make money and no other means?... Why, surely!
I would run for it."

"Luce! Do you realize what it is they're doing in there?"

"No, I don't think about it."

"Everything that will make people suffer, die, that tears them to
pieces, that burns, that tortures beings like you, like me...."

She put her hand on her mouth to signal to him to hush.

"I know, I know all that, but I don't want to think of it."

"You don't want to think about it?"

"No," said she.

And a moment after:

"One must live.... If one thinks about it, one cannot live any more. For
myself I want to live, I want to live. If they compel me to do that in
order to live, shall I torment myself on this account or on that? That's
no business of mine; it isn't I that wants it. If it is wrong it is not
my fault, not my own. As for me, what I want is nothing bad."

"And what is it you do want?"

"First of all I want to live."

"You love life?"

"Why, of course. Am I wrong in that?"

"Oh, no! It is so jolly that you do live...."

"And you, you don't love it also?"

"I did not, up to the time...."

"Up to the time?"

(This question did not call for an answer. Both of them knew it.)

Following up his thought, Pierre:

"You just said 'first of all.' ... 'I want