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upward movement of grace and propriety. Her white hands seemed barely to touch the cutlery when they ate at the family dinner table and her lips left no trace of their presence on the wine glass. On one occasion, Stephen had noticed, some tiny adhesion caused the membrane of her lower lip to linger for a fraction of a second as she pulled the glass away to return it to its place, but still the surface of it had remained clear and shining. She caught him staring at it.
    Yet despite her formality toward him and her punctilious ease of manner, Stephen sensed some other element in what he had termed the pulse of her. It was impossible to say through which sense he had the impression, but somehow, perhaps only in the tiny white hairs on the skin of her bare arm or the blood he had seen rise beneath the light freckles of her cheekbones, he felt certain there was some keener physical life than she was actually living in the calm, restrictive rooms of her husband's house with its oval door handles of polished china and its neatly inlaid parquet floors.
    *
    A week later Azaire suggested to Meyraux that he should bring Stephen to eat with the men in a room at the back of the factory where they had lunch. There were two or three long refectory tables at which they could either eat the food they had brought or buy whatever dish had been cooked by a woman with a white head scarf and missing teeth.
    On the third day, in the middle of a general conversation, Stephen stood up abruptly, said, "Excuse me," and rushed from the room.
    An elderly man called Jacques Bonnet followed him outside and found him leaning against the wall of the factory. He put a friendly hand on Stephen's shoulder and asked if he was all right.
    Stephen's face was pale and two lines of sweat ran from his forehead. "Yes, I'm fine," he said.
    "What was the matter? Don't you feel well?"
    "It was probably just too hot. I'll be fine." He took out a handkerchief and wiped his face.
    Bonnet said, "Why don't you come back inside and finish your lunch? It looked a_ _nice bit of rabbit the old woman had cooked up."
    "No!" Stephen was trembling. "I won't go back. I'm sorry." He pulled himself away from Bonnet's paternal hand and moved off briskly into the town. "Tell Azaire I'll be back later," he called over his shoulder. At dinner the following day Azaire asked him if he had recovered.
    "Yes, thank you," said Stephen. "There was nothing the matter with me. I just felt a little faint."
    "Faint? It sounds like a problem of the circulation."
    "I don't know. There's something in the air, it may be one of the chemicals used by the dyers, I'm not sure. It makes it hard for me to breathe."
    "Perhaps you should see a doctor, then. I can easily arrange an appointment."
    "No, thank you. It's nothing."
    Azaire's gaze had filled with something like amusement. "I don't like to think of you having some kind of fit. I could easily--"
    "For goodness' sake, René," said Madame Azaire. "He's told you that there's nothing to worry about. Why don t you leave him alone?"
    Azaire's fork made a loud clatter as he laid it down on his plate. For a moment his face had an expression of panic, like that of the schoolboy who suffers a sudden reverse and can't understand the rules of behaviour by which his rival has won approval. Then he began to smile sardonically, as though to indicate that really he knew best and that his decision not to argue further was a temporary indulgence he was granting his juniors. He turned to his wife with a teasing lightness of manner.
    "And have you heard your minstrel again in your wanderings in the town, my dear?"
    She looked down at her plate. "I was not wandering, René. I was doing errands."
    "Of course, my dear. My wife is a mysterious creature, Monsieur," he said to Stephen. "No one knows--like the little stream in the song--whither she flows or where her end will be."
    Stephen held his teeth together in order to prevent himself protesting on Madame Azaire's behalf.
    "I