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a careful eye on the waiting-room doors all the time he had been chatting with the stationmaster, turned on his heels and went to rejoin his wife. But the carriage had moved, and their compartment was now a few steps further down the platform. Roubaud turned round, pushed his wife forward and, taking her by the wrist, helped her to climb into the train. Powerless to resist, Séverine kept looking anxiously over her shoulder; there was something happening, and she wanted to know what it was. It was a passenger, arriving at the last minute and carrying only a travelling rug. He was wearing a heavy, blue overcoat with the collar turned up, and his hat pulled down over his eyes. All that could be seen of his face, in the flickering light of the gas lamps, was a few wisps of white beard. Monsieur Vandorpe and Monsieur Dauvergne, despite the latecomer’s all too obvious wish not to be seen, had moved forward to greet him. They followed him as he walked along the train. He only acknowledged them when they had passed three carriages and arrived in front of the reserved compartment. He opened the door and quickly got in. Séverine had recognized him and was shaking uncontrollably. She collapsed on to the carriage seat. Roubaud seized her by the arm, tightening his grip in a final triumphant gesture of possession. He now knew that the deed would be done.
    In one minute the station clock would sound the half hour. A newsvendor was valiantly trying to persuade people to buy his last remaining copies of the evening paper; a few passengers still stood on the platform, finishing their cigarettes. All of a sudden everyone got into the train. Two inspectors walked along it from each end, closing the doors with a bang. Roubaud, thinking he had chosen a compartment that was empty, discovered to his annoyance that one of the window-seats was occupied by a person dressed in black, who sat there and neither moved nor spoke; he assumed it was a woman in mourning. To make matters worse, the carriage door was suddenly flung open again, and two more passengers were bundled into the compartment, a fat man and his equally fat wife, who collapsed on to the seat, breathless. Roubaud swore to himself angrily. The train was ready to leave. A fine drizzle had begun to fall. Trains continued to thread their way through the rain-swept night; all that could be seen were moving rows of lights from the carriage windows. Green lights shone through the gloom; here and there a lineman’s lamp bobbed and curtsied close to the ground. All else was darkness, a vast impenetrable darkness, save for the two train sheds of the mainline station, illumined by the pallid glow from the gas lamps. Darkness engulfed everything; sounds faded to nothing. Suddenly the air was rent by a great gush of steam from the locomotive, as the cylinder taps were opened. White clouds swirled up into the sky, unfolding like the shroud of some ghastly apparition, and shot through with dark streaks of smoke. Once again, a cloud of soot drifted across the Paris sky, reddened by the fiery glow from the engine below.
    The assistant traffic controller raised his lamp to tell the driver he could ask for the road. There were two blasts on the whistle. The red light in front of the signalman’s cabin changed to white. The guard stood by the door of the luggage-van waiting for the all clear. He then signalled to the driver, who gave one long blast on the whistle and opened the regulator. The train began to move; it was on its way, very slowly at first but gradually gathering speed. It ran under the Pont de l’Europe and plunged into the Batignolles tunnel. All that could be seen was the red triangle, formed by the three tail lamps, like drops of blood from an open wound, still visible as the train disappeared into the chill blackness of the night. Nothing could now stop it. It sped on its way and was gone.

II
    The house at La Croix-de-Maufras 1 stands in a large garden, which is cut in two by the