collar of the flannel shirt.

[36]

"Oh, God, it's too damned absurd! An arrangement for mutual suicide and no damned other thing," said Randolph, raising his head.

"A certain jolly asinine grotesqueness, though. I mean, if you were God and could look at it like that ... Oh, Randy, why do they enjoy hatred so?"

"A question of taste ... as the lady said when she kissed the cow."

"But it isn't. It isn't natural for people to hate that way, it can't be. It even disgusts the perfectly stupid damn-fool people, like Higgins, who believes that the Bible was written in God's own handwriting and that the newspapers tell the truth."

"It makes me sick at ma stomach, Howe, to talk to one of those hun-hatin' women, if they're male or female."

"It is a stupid affair, la vie, as the doctor at P.1. said yesterday...."

"Hell, yes...."

They sat silent, watching the rain beat on the window, and run down in sparkling finger-like streams.

"What I can't get over is these Frenchwomen." Randolph threw back his head and laughed. "They're so bloody frank. Did I tell you about what happened to me at that last village on the Verdun road?"

"No."

"I was lyin' down for a nap under a plum-tree, a wonderfully nice place near a li'l brook an' all, an' suddenly that crazy Jane ... [37]You know the one that used to throw stones at us out of that broken-down house at the corner of the road.... Anyway, she comes up to me with a funny look in her eyes an' starts makin' love to me. I had a regular wrastlin' match gettin' away from her."

[37]

"Funny position for you to be in, getting away from a woman."

"But doesn't that strike you funny? Why down where I come from a drunken mulatto woman wouldn't act like that. They all keep up a fake of not wantin' your attentions." His black eyes sparkled, and he laughed his deep ringing laugh, that made the withered woman smile as she set an omelette before them.

"Voilà, messieurs," she said with a grand air, as if it 

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