ave a greenish glint; you can
see in his blackguard face that his thoughts are with his knife.

But between the two, as they grip each other in looks and mangle in
words, Lamuse intervenes with his huge pacific head, like a baby's, and
his face of sanguinary hue: "Allons, allons! You're not going to cut
yourselves up! Can't be allowed!"

The others also interpose, and the antagonists are separated, but they
continue to hurl murderous looks at each other across the barrier of
their comrades. Pepin mutters a residue of slander in tones that quiver
with malice--

"The hooligan, the ruffian, the blackguard! But wait a bit! I'll see
him later about this!"

On the other side, Tulacque confides in the poilu who is beside him:
"That crab-louse! Non, but you know what he is! You know--there's no
more to be said. Here, we've got to rub along with a lot of people that
we don't know from Adam. We know 'em and yet we don't know 'em; but
that man, if he thinks he can mess me about, he'll find himself up the
wrong street! You wait a bit. I'll smash him up one of these days,
you'll see!"

Meanwhile the general conversation is resumed, drowning the last twin
echoes of the quarrel.

"It's every day alike, alors!" says Paradis to me; "yesterday it was
Plaisance who wanted to let Fumex have it heavy on the jaw, about God
knows what--a matter of opium pills, I think. First it's one and then
it's another that talks of doing some one in. Are we getting to be a
lot of wild animals because we look like 'em?"

"Mustn't take them too seriously, these men," Lamuse declares; "they're
only kids."

"True enough, seeing that they're men."

* * * * *

The day matures. A little more light has trickled through the mists
that enclose the earth. But the sky has remained overcast, and now it
dissolves in rain; With a slowness which itself disheartens, the wind
brings back its great wet void upon us. The rain-haze makes everything
clammy and dull--even the Turkey red of Lamuse's cheeks, and even the
orange armor that caparisons Tulacque. The water penetrates to the deep
joy with which dinner endowed us, and puts it out. Space itself
shrinks; and the sky, which is a field of melancholy, comes closely
down upon the earth, which is a field of death.

We are still there, implanted and idle. It will be hard to-day to reach
the end of it, to get rid of the afternoon. We shiver in discomfort,
and keep shifting our positions,