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was much more admiring than you think," he said, and he looked at her so tenderly that she felt embarrassed.
    The windscreen-wipers beat time with supreme inefficacy and she wondered how he was able to drive. She had laddered one of her stockings getting in; she felt marvellously gay in this uncomfortable car, with this young and clearly captivated stranger and the rain trickling down from the hood and soiling her light-coloured coat. She began to hum: after paying her taxes, after posting off her mother's allowance and settling her debts at the shop, she would have . . . she didn't feel like working it out. Simon was another fast driver. She thought of Roger and the night she had spent and grew gloomy again.
    "You wouldn't care to have lunch with me one day?"
    Simon spoke quickly, without looking at her. She felt a momentary panic. She did not know him; it would mean making efforts at conversation, asking him questions about himself, entering a new existence. She rebelled at the idea.
    "I can't at the moment. I've too much work."
    "Ah," he said.
    He did not insist. She shot a glance at him, he had slowed down and seemed even to be driving sadly. She took a cigarette and he held out his lighter. He had boyish wrists; they were too thin and projected comically from a heavy tweed jacket. You shouldn't dress like a trapper with your build, she thought, and she had a momentary hankering to take him in hand. He was just the type to arouse maternal instincts in a woman of her age.
    "Here we are," she said.
    He got out without a word and opened the door for her. He looked mulish and downcast.
    "Thank you again," she said.
    "It was nothing."
    She took three paces towards the door and turned. He had not moved. He was looking at her.
     
    3
     
    S IMON spent a quarter of an hour looking for a space and finally parked six hundred yards from his office. He was devilling for a friend of his mother's, a very famous and entirely odious barrister who, for reasons Simon dreaded understanding, put up with his nonsense. There were times when he felt like pushing him too far, but his laziness deterred him. Stepping out on to the pavement he stumbled and at once began to limp, looking meek and resigned. Women turned as he passed and Simon felt their thoughts hit him in the back: "So young, so handsome—and a cripple! How tragic!", though he derived no assurance from his looks, only relief: "I'd never have had the strength to be ugly." And the thought brought in its wake a glimpse of an ascetic life: now the outcast painter, now the shepherd in the blazing Landes.
    He limped into the office, and old Alice shot him a glance which was part solicitous, part sceptical. She knew his pet diversions and suffered them with regretful condescension. Had he taken his work seriously he might, with his looks and his imagination, have become a great advocate. He made her a grandiloquent bow and sat down at his desk.
    "Why the limp?"
    "It isn't a proper limp. Who killed who last night? When am I going to have a nice, fat, juicy murder to deal with?"
    "You've been buzzed for three times this morning. It's half-past eleven."
    The buzzer could only be the Grand Maître. Simon glanced at the door.
    "I overslept. But I met someone really terrific."
    "A woman?"
    "Yes. You know: lovely face, very soft, a little drawn . . . gestures which were really gestures . . . Afflicted with some secret sorrow ..."
    "Your time would be better spent looking at the Guillaut file."
    "Of course."
    "Is she married?"
    Simon was jerked out of his dreams. "I don't know . . . But if she is, they're not happy. She's been having money troubles, but they cleared up this morning and she was so gay. I love women who delight in money."
    She shrugged. "Then you love them all."
    "Nearly all," said Simon. "Except when they're too young."
    He immersed himself in his file. The door opened and Maître Fleury's head appeared.
    "Monsieur Van den Besh . . . one moment." Simon exchanged looks with the