One of the English interpreters said, “It would be better not to give us a prepared text at all than to make all these departures from it.”

“What did you think of the speech?” Mr. Willoughby asked a white-haired Frenchman who paused to greet him.

“Most interesting.” Mr. Raymond-Guiton bowed to Miss Kingslake over his tray. “And particularly well calculated—that interpolation about the flowers.”

Miss Kingslake said, “I rather thought that seemed extempore.”

Mr. Raymond-Guiton smiled. “Most interesting.” The repetition of the remark had the effect of diminishing its significance. He passed on with his tray and disappeared behind a screen of latticed plants.

“Now wasn’t it he,” Miss Kingslake asked, wrinkling up her brow, “who refused to go to the Bastille Day party because of his aristocratic connections?”

“You’re thinking of that fat chap in the Development Section. This one’s too well-bred to do a thing like that. Miss Kingslake, shall we go?”

No sooner had they risen from their chairs than two pale girls in short skirts came up with their trays of tea and cake and started to push the empty dishes aside. Miss Kingslake and Mr. Willoughby lost one another briefly in the maze of tables and met again outside the glass doors, in the relative shelter of a magazine stand.

“May I see you to your elevator bank, Miss Kingslake?”

“That would be lovely,” she said.

They went down a short flight of steps and walked slowly along a gray-tiled, gray-walled corridor lined with blue doors.

“I wonder,” she said, “if we will ever meet again.”

“I have been wondering that too,” he answered without surprise. “In a place like this there are so many partings and reunions—yet one does find one’s way back to the same people again. Rather like those folk dances they organize at Christmas in the Social and Anthropological Department. I feel we shall meet.”

They reached a row of elevator doors. Mr. Willoughby pushed the Up button.

She said, as if they were on a railway platform, “Don’t wait.”

“I really should get back to the office,” he said, “and see if my Travel Authorization’s come in yet.”

“Of course.”

“Shall we say goodbye, then?”

“Why yes,” she said, but did not say goodbye.

A Down elevator stopped but no one got off. A messenger boy went slowly past wheeling a trolley of stiff brown envelopes.

“Miss Kingslake,” Mr. Willoughby said. “Miss Kingslake. Once, in this corridor, I wanted very much to kiss you.”

She stood with her back to the gray wall as if she took from it her protective coloring.

He smiled. “We were on our way to the Advisory Commission on Administrative and Budgetary Questions.”