same time as mine, but the
two places are at a distance from each other, and it always seems a long
time before I see him coming.

The first minutes go by unheeded because the seven o'clock outpouring
streams by where I post myself on the sidewalk. No signal is given. At a
mysterious order and at a given moment a black wave foams and contracts
at the exit, and as in greeting to the open light sends up a thousand
exclamations, which make one long cry of relief.

This evening it is still light, and the escaping crowd is not inclined
to hurry. The sluggishness of the air, the sonorousness, the droning,
the motley street ... the crowd condenses and remains coagulated on one
spot. Is it ever going to decide to pass on!

When the day's work is over, you come back to the brilliant world
marvelling at the holiday sky, and blinking.... Summer is knocking at
the window ... it does you good to be standing on your legs expanding
your lungs. One group attracts you. They all look like wags, their
conversation fascinates; if you were to listen to them, you would remain
standing there with your hands in your pockets. But you are being
awaited at home, and the circle almost as soon as formed breaks up with
casual farewells flung over the shoulder.

When the women hurry along, rain or shine, it is in the subconscious
urge to show themselves to everyone. Those who swelled the hubbub a
little while ago with jostling elbows and foreheads set like a
ram's--"get a move on you!"--are the first to display their pronounced
busts and the slowest to walk away with chirps and winged signs and nods
and a swaying of sinuous backs.

The street is emptied. Some women still pace up and down the block. They
are waiting for someone too.

There he is!

From the busy far-end of the street, across the eddies of people,
nothing to tell me it is he but the shape of his hat. Again I feel the
security that his appearance always brings.

His tall figure hemmed in by a group detaches itself, grows bigger, and
becomes more recognizable step by step. I go to meet him, slowly,
smiling despite myself as he hurries, and when our hands touch, my heart
breaks into bloom.... An overwhelming instant ... a soft ecstasy ...
fusion.... And every evening it is as if I had never found him....

Let us go by the boulevards. The weather is so lovely, we have plenty of
time.

Our questions tumble over one another, clear away bothersome trifles, do
not even wait for ans