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seen as she flung her workday shoes, her overall and her skirt across the room, and stood in front of the looking-glass in her vest and panties.
    Mr. Hire did not go over to the window. He watched from a distance, while putting on his tie and his button-shoes. He knew that when she was ready he would hear a crash, as she opened the window to air the room.
    Anyway, he did not wait. He went out and passed the lodge at such a speed that the concierge had to dash into the passage to make sure it was he. On the pavement, some people were still on their way to the cemetery: this was the outgoing tide, arriving from Paris and moving towards the open.
    But the incoming tide was stronger, as the inhabitants of Juvisy, Corbeil and still more distant places, flowed towards Paris in vans, in special buses, on bicycles, on foot.
    The inspector was there, not ten yards away from the house, and Mr. Hire walked right past him, waddling, bouncing with his chest pushed forward, in his usual gait. He didn't walk like that on purpose. It was the way he was built. His plump body skipped of its own accord as his short legs twinkled along.
    The crowd waiting between the chains at the tram-stop was a hundred yards long, and Mr. Hire crossed the road, stopped twice because of cars, and got himself pushed forward by the policeman.
    'Come along . . . Hurry up, there . . .'
    He was breathing with difficulty. His nerves were tense. He deliberately refrained from stepping onto the pavement on this side. He was listening to the different noises, and could sense that the plain-clothes inspector was about thirty feet away.
    At last there came the roar of an engine, and a bell jangling frantically; this was the special bus from Juvisy, which was full and not going to stop.
    Mr. Hire's teeth were clenched. He half-turned his head, saw the front part of the bus, and flung himself forward with all his strength, groping with his right hand, which at last caught the rail of the bus, while two arms were stretched to haul him onto the step.
    He couldn't stop himself smiling, in a kind of excitement that made him seem touching and absurd. The conductor, at the far end of the bus, had not seen him. The people on the platform, already close-packed, squeezed together more tightly, but looked at him with silent disapproval. As for the inspector, he was left far behind at the crossroads, standing on his two useless legs, almost lost in the crowd.
    A woman with somebody's elbow jammed into her ribs grumbled, and Mr. Hire stammered hastily:
    'I'm getting off at once . . .'
    The bus ran past another stop, and Mr. Hire edged onto the step, faced forwards, and let go. From the platform a dozen faces watched him curiously, as, alone on the road and drawn along by the impetus of the bus, he trotted behind it for a dozen short steps.
    It was a quarter-past one. He walked quickly, not along the main street of Villejuif, but along a parallel street which led back towards the cross-roads, though he did not venture as far as that.
    He stopped at a street corner, flattening himself against the wall, as grave and forbidding as a policeman on the watch.
    The dairy girl came along first, the collar of her tight-fitting green coat turned up, her cheeks chapped with the cold. Almost at once she was joined by a young man in a grey felt hat, and she stood on tiptoe to kiss him on the cheek, as she took his arm.
    They were talking, but their words could not be heard. The Colombes bus pulled up, and Mr. Hire noticed that the girl glanced round before getting in, as though she were looking for someone.
    Then he, too, got in. There was not a scrap of room left, but nobody was turned away. One couldn't move an arm or a leg. The passengers' heads were swaying, at more or less the same level, to the jolting of the bus, and inside they formed an indistinguishable mass.
    The couple stood about two yards away from Mr. Hire. Now and then their eyes met, as the eyes of all the passengers did,