In the village a clock began to strike seven: Chavel

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with the torch depressed counted the hour: it was the hour of the cinder track and the blank wall and the other man's death. It seemed to him that he had taken a lot of trouble to delay a recurring occasion. Carosse mistook his hesitation: he became masterful. 'Now drop your torch and stand away from the door.' But Chavel raised it and flashed it again off and on and off and on again.

Carosse fired in quick succession. In his agitation the first bullet went wide, splitting the glass of a picture: at the second the torch fell and lay on the hall floor making a little bright path to the door. Chavel's face creased with pain. He was driven back as though by the buffet of a fist against the wall and then the acuteness of the pain passed: he had had far worse pain from an appendix. When he looked up Carosse was gone and the girl was in front of him.

'Are you hurt?'

'No,' he said, 'look at the picture. He missed.' The two shots had been too rapid for her to distinguish them. He wanted to get her out of the way before anything ugly happened. He moved a few feet gingerly towards a chair and sat down. In a few moments the stain would soak through. He said, 'That's over. He'll never dare come back.'

She said, 'And you really are Chavel?'

'Yes.'

'But that was another lie about the message, wasn't it? You never flashed the same way twice.'

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'Another lie. Yes,' he said. 'I wanted him to shoot. He can't come back now. He thinks he's killed me like . . . like . . .' He couldn't remember the other man's name. The heat in the hall seemed to him extraordi­nary at that early hour; sweat ran like mercury beads across his forehead. He said, 'He'll have gone the opposite way to St Jean. Go down there quickly and get the priest to help you. Roche will be useful. Remember he's the actor Carosse.'

She said, 'You must be hurt.'

'Oh, no. I got a ricochet from the wall. That's all. It's shocked me a bit. Get me a pencil and paper. I'll be writing a report of this while you fetch the police.' She brought him what he wanted and stood puzzled and ill at ease before him. He was afraid he'd faint before she'd gone. He said gentry, 'You're all right now, aren't you? All the hatred's gone?'

'Yes.'

'That's good,' he said, 'good.' There was nothing left of his love—desire had no importance: he felt simply a certain pity, gentleness, and the tenderness one can feel for a stranger's misfortune. 'You'll be all right now,' he told her. 'Just run along,' he said with slight impatience, as to a child.

'You're all right?' she asked anxiously.

'Yes. Yes.'

Immediately she had gone he began to write: he wanted to tie everything up: his lawyer's instinct wanted to make a neat end. He wished he knew the

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exact wording of the decree, but it was unlikely to affect the original transfer without a denunciation by one party. This note he was writing now: 'I leave everything of which I die possessed' was merely con­tributing evidence to prove that he had no intention of denouncing—it had no legal force in itself—he had no witness. The blood from his stomach was running now down his leg. It was as well that the girl was out of the way. The touch of blood cooled his fever like water. He took a quick look round: through the open door the light returned now across the fields: it was oddly satisfactory to die in his own home alone. It was as if one possessed at death only what the eyes took in. Poor Janvier, he thought—the cinder track. He began to sign his name, but before he had quite finished he felt the water of his wound flowing immeasurably: a river: a torrent: a tide of peace.

The paper lay on the floor beside him, scrawled over with almost illegible writing. He never knew that his signature read only Jean-Louis Ch ... which stood of course as plainly for Chariot as for Chavel. A crowning justice saw to it that he was not troubled. Even a lawyer's meticulous conscience was allowed to rest in peace.