By the dying man's head, on the pillow, Amelie had laid a First of May
nosegay, a few sprays of lily-of-the-valley. A leaky tap in the
courtyard dripped, dripped into a bucket. For a second mental images
hovered tremblingly at the back of his mind, like a light flickering and
dying down ... a house in the country with glycine on the walls: a
garden where a child was playing: a boy lying on the turf: a little
fountain plashing in its stone basin: a little girl laughing....




II


They drove out of Paris. They crossed the vast plains of France shrouded
in mist. It was an evening like that on which Christophe had arrived in
Paris ten years before. He was a fugitive then, as now. But then his
friend, the man who loved him, was alive: and Christophe was fleeing
towards him....

During the first hour Christophe was still under the excitement of the
fight: he talked volubly in a loud voice: in a breathless, jerky fashion
he kept on telling what he had seen and heard: he was proud of his
achievement and felt no remorse. Manousse and Canet talked too, by way
of making him forget. Gradually his feverish excitement subsided, and
Christophe stopped talking: his two companions went on making
conversation alone. He was a little bewildered by the afternoon's
adventures, but in no way abashed. He recollected the time when he had
come to France, a fugitive then, always a fugitive. It made him laugh.
No doubt he was fated to be so. It gave him no pain to be leaving Paris: