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comfortable."
    I was embarrassed. I tried to find the words to thank him. "You didn't need …"
    He shrugged his shoulders and bought a book in the Série Noire . Then they came with me on to the platform. There were about ten minutes to wait for the train. We all three sat down on a bench.
    "I'd very much like to see you again," I said.
    "We have a phone number in Paris. We shall probably be there this winter."
    He took a pen out of the inner pocket of his jacket, tore the endpaper out of his detective novel and wrote his name and phone number on it. Then he folded the page and gave it to me.
    I got into the carriage, and they both stood by the door, waiting for the train to start.
    "You'll be left in peace …" he said. "There's no one in these compartments."
    As the train began to move, she took off her sunglasses and I met her pale blue or grey eyes again.
    "Good luck," she said.
    At Marseilles, I went through my travel bag to make sure I had my passport, and I discovered, tucked under the collar of a shirt, a few bank notes. I wondered whether it was she or he who had had the idea of leaving me this money. Perhaps both at the same time.

I TOOK ADVANTAGE of the fourteenth of July to creep into our flat in the Cité Véron without attracting anyone's attention. I went up the staircase that no one uses any more, behind the Moulin Rouge. On the third floor, the door opens on to a utility room. Before my false departure for Rio de Janeiro I had taken the key to this door – an old Bricard key whose existence Annette has no suspicion of- and conspicuously left on my bedside table the only key she knows, the one to the front door of the flat. So even if she had guessed that I'd stayed in Paris, she knew that I had left my key behind, and consequently that it was impossible for me to get into the flat unexpectedly.
    No light in the utility room. I groped my way to the handle of the door that opens on to a little bedroom, which would have been called "the children's room" if Annette and I had had any. A booklined corridor leads to the big room we use as a salon. I walked on tiptoe, but I was in no danger. They were all up above, on the terrace. I could hear the murmur of their conversation. Life was continuing without me. For a moment I was tempted to climb the narrow stairs with their plaited-rope hand rail and their life buoys hanging on the walls. I should come out on to the terrace which resembles the upper deck of a liner, because Annette and I had wanted our flat to give us the impression of always being on a cruise: portholes, gangways, rails … I should come out on to the terrace, and what I might describe as a deathly silence would fall. Then, when they'd got over their surprise, they'd ask me questions, they'd make a fuss of me, there would be even greater gaiety than usual and they'd drink champagne in honour of the revenant.
    But I stopped on the first step. No, decidedly, I had no wish to see anyone, or to talk, or to give any explanations, or to carry on with my old life as before. I wanted to go into our bedroom to get a few summer clothes and a pair of moccasins. I turned the doorhandle gently. It was locked on the inside. Below, on the carpet, a thin shaft of light. A couple had left the party while it was in full swing. Who? Annette and Cavanaugh? My widow – for wasn't she my widow if l decided never to reappear? – was she occupying the conjugal bed at this moment with my best friend?
    I went into the adjoining room, which I use as a study. The communicating door was ajar. I recognized Annette's voice.
    "No, no … My darling … Don't be afraid … No one's going to come and disturb us …"
    "Are you sure? Anyone could leave the terrace and come in here … Especially Cavanaugh …"
    "No, no … Cavanaugh won't come … I locked the door …"
    From the gentle, protective tones of Annette's first words, I could tell that she wasn't with Cavanaugh. Then I recognized the muffled voice of Ben Smidane, a young