ver were two beings more lonely.
Their quasi-nurse, Corporal Mignan, was no doubt right in his estimate
of their characters. For him, so patient in the wintry days, with his
'_deux phenomenes_,' they were divested of all that halo which
misfortune sets round the heads of the afflicted. He had too much to do
with them, and saw them as they would have been if undogged by Fate. Of
Roche he would say: '_Il n'est pas mon reve. Je n'aime pas ces types
taciturnes; quand meme, il n'est pas mauvais. Il est marin--les
marins--!_' and he would shrug his shoulders, as who should say: 'Those
poor devils--what can you expect?' '_Mais ce Gray_'--it was one bitter
day when Gray had refused absolutely to wear his great-coat during a
motor drive--'_c'est un mauvais type! Il est malin--il sait tres bien ce
qu'il veut. C'est un egoiste!_' An egoist! Poor Gray! No doubt he was,
instinctively conscious that if he did not make the most of what little
personality was left within his wandering form, it would slip and he
would be no more. Even a winter fly is mysteriously anxious not to
become dead. That he was '_malin_'--cunning--became the accepted view
about Gray; not so '_malin_' that he could 'cut three paws off a duck,'
as the old grey Territorial, Grandpere Poirot, would put it, but
'_malin_' enough to know very well what he wanted, and how, by sticking
to his demand, to get it. Mignan, typically French, did not allow enough
for the essential Englishman in Gray. Besides, one _must_ be _malin_ if
one has only the power to say about one-tenth of what one wants, and
then not be understood once in twenty times. Gray did not like his
great-coat--a fine old French-blue military thing with brass
buttons--the arrogant civilian would have none of it! It was easier to
shift the Boches on the Western front than to shift an idea, once in his
head. In the poor soil of his soul the following plants of thought alone
now flourished: Hatred of the Boches; love of English tobacco--'_Il est
bon--il est bon!_' he would say, tapping his Virginian cigarette; the
wish to see again his 'petite fille'; to wash himself; to drink a '_cafe
natur_' and bottled beer every day after the midday meal, and to go to
Lyons to see his uncle and work for his living. And who shall say that
any of these fixed ideas were evil in him?

But back to Flotsam, whose fixed idea was Brittany! Nostalgia is a long
word, and a malady from which the English do not suffer, for they carry
th