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the piece of paper toward Meyraux. Stephen was surprised by the simplicity of Azaire’s assault. He had made no pretence that the work force had anything to gain from the new arrangements or that they would make up in some other way for what they were clearly being asked to forgo. Perhaps it was just a first bargaining position.
    Meyraux, confronted with the details, was impressively calm.“It’s about what I expected,” he said. “You appear to be asking us to settle for even less than the dyers, Monsieur. I need hardly remind you what situation they are in.”
    Azaire began to fill his pipe. “Who is behind that nonsense?” he said.
    “What is behind it,” said Meyraux, “are the attempts of the owners to use slave labour at diminishing levels of pay.”
    “You know what I mean,” said Azaire.
    “The name of Lucien Lebrun is being mentioned.”
    “Little Lucien! I didn’t think he had the courage.”
    It was bright in the glass office, the sunlight streaming in across the books and papers on the table beneath the window and illuminating the faces of the two antagonists. Stephen watched their fierce exchange but felt dissociated from it, as though they spoke only in slogans. From the subject of Azaire’s wealth, his mind moved naturally to possessions, to the house on the boulevard, the garden, the plump children, Grégoire with his bored eyes, Lisette with her suggestive smile, and above all to Madame Azaire, a figure he viewed with an incompatible mixture of feelings.
    “… the natural consequence of a production with so many separate processes,” said Azaire.
    “Well, I too would like to see the dyeing done here,” said Meyraux, “but as you know …”
    He could not be sure of her age, and there was something in the vulnerability of her skin where he had seen the goosepimples rise on her arm in a draught from the garden. There was something above all in the impatience he had seen in the turn of her head that concealed the expression of her eyes.
    “… would you not agree, Monsieur Wraysford?”
    “I certainly would.”
    “Not if we were to invest in larger premises,” said Meyraux.
    I am mad, thought Stephen, quelling a desire to laugh; I must be insane to be sitting in this hot glass office watching the face of this man discussing the employment of hundreds and I am thinking things I can’t admit even to myself while smiling my complicity to …
    “I will not discuss it further in the presence of this young man,” said Meyraux. “Forgive me, Monsieur.” He stood up and inclined his head formally toward Stephen. “It’s nothing personal.”
    “Of course,” said Stephen, also standing up. “Nothing personal.”
    ———
    In his notebook the code word Stephen used when describing a certain aspect of Madame Azaire and of his confused feeling towards her was “pulse.” It seemed to him to be sufficiently cryptic, yet also to suggest something of his suspicion that she was animated by a different kind of rhythm from that which beat in her husband’s blood. It also referred to an unusual aspect of her physical presence. No one could have been more proper in her dress and her toilet than Madame Azaire. She spent long parts of the day bathing or changing her clothes; she carried a light scent of rose soap or perfume when she brushed past him in the passageways. Her clothes were more fashionable than those of other women in the town yet revealed less. She carried herself modestly when she sat or stood; she slid into chairs with her feet close together, so that beneath the folds of her skirts her knees too must have been almost touching. When she rose again it was without any leverage from her hands or arms but with a spontaneous 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