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do things like that.”
    Simon was silent.
    Duchene’s voice rose a little. “But it was murder! Seventy-two people.”
    Charles Simon said: “I know that, monsieur. They are murderers, every one of them, if it will serve their end. They did not want to feed these old ones, or to care for them. That is all.”
    The old man said, distressed: “But that is not civilised. That is what savages would do, in the black jungle.”
    Simon smiled sourly. “I think that we are now in the black jungle, in Corbeil. And only now have we begun to realise it.”
    That was all that was said that night, and Duchene went back to his empty
appartement
in the town. He did not even go to bed that night. He sat primly in a gilded, plush-upholstered chair all night, his hands resting on the table, smoking cigarette after cigarette, staring unseeing at the ornate wall before him. At dawn he got up, pulled aside the black-out, and opened a window to let air into the stuffy, smoke-filled room. An hour later he went down to the works.
    Simon came early to his room that day. “The Commission comes at eleven o’clock,” he said. “Lunch as usual?”
    M. le directeur
drummed nervously upon the table. “I will not see them,” he said irritably. “You must tell them I am ill.”
    Simon looked at the old man for a moment, silent. Then he said quietly: “It is understandable, that. But they will know that you are here, monsieur, and that may make a difficulty. Perhaps you could go home till they have gone.”
    Duchene raised weary eyes, clouded with doubts, to his designer. “I am going to close down the factory,” he said, but there was irresolution in his voice. “I will not have my people working for those German swine.”
    Simon said gently: “Leave it for to-day, monsieur. Let the car take you to your house when it goes in to fetch the Germans.” They still had a tiny drain of petrol for the works car for station trips.
    The old man flared out: “I will not work for them, myself, not after this. Not one more kilogramme of cement shall they have from me.”
    Charles Simon dropped down on to the chair before the deskand leaned towards the older man. “You are tired now,” he said. “You do not look well at all. Did you sleep badly, monsieur?”
    The old man said: “I did not go to bed. I was thinking of … all sorts of things.”
    They had worked together for ten years, and Simon knew his chief very well. “Listen, monsieur,” he said. “We cannot do that, now. It would not help at all for you to close the factory. It would be open within the hour with Germans in control, and all that would be gained would be one hour of our production lost to them. And you would be held in a concentration-camp. That would not benefit Corbeil, or France.”
    Duchene passed a weary hand across his eyes.
    “One must go on working for the present,” said the younger man.
    M. le directeur
said: “I have been thinking over what you said the other day, about the runways at the aerodrome at Caen. Each ton we send out is a blow at England, and although I do not like the English, at any rate they are still fighting in a way against these German swine. How do you feel about that, Simon?”
    “I do not like it, monsieur.”
    “I do not like it either. The English are still fighting in their way against these filthy murderers, and you and I are fighting in our way against the English. Does that make sense to you—you who are an Englishman yourself? Hey? Does that make sense?”
    “No, monsieur. It does not make sense. But there is nothing we can do about it.”
    Duchene sat brooding for a time, in silence. “I would rather that the factory had been blown up and stood in ruins than that it should be used like this.”
    “That is what we should have done,” said the designer. “It is too late now, but we should have blown it up ourselves, before the Germans came.”
    The old man stared at him. “Who could have guessed these Germans were not people