Simple. Could it be? It could. And it was so. What she thought of the idea was, of course, not for me even to guess about. But for the moment I knew what I thought about things and I liked what I thought very much.

But, those things, looking up at a lamp-lit window and being in love, don’t happen like that. Ah! But they do. Love of that kind, the sudden, swiping, heart-stopping joy of it all, does happen. Like instant coffee.

I wandered back to the hotel, making the glorious moment of discovery last as long as I could. It was such a towering feeling, exalted. Idiotic. Hands in my pockets, scuffing the cobbles, almost whistling, like a just-released schoolboy, I went across the little terrace of the hotel, past the potted laurels and the pink-faced chef, his pinned-on menu flapping and twisting in the slight breeze, and to delay my rendezvous with the bleeding-heart Jesus and the kittens I went to the bar for a final drink.

There were two slightly drunken men leaning on the bar prodding through their wallets for something. The barman poured me a generous brandy. I looked across the smoked room.

The Dutch were at a table folding up a map, still gobbling, the Paris couple were leaving, he checking his pockets vaguely for glasses, she pulling down the jacket of her tweed suit. They nodded goodnight to the barman who, at that moment, switched off the neon strip light, leaving one hanging lamp to blare coldly from the ceiling.

I asked him, cupping my glass in my hands, if he had ever heard of a Monsieur Millar living at L’Hermitage in Saint-Basile. He corrected me politely as he wiped down his Formica-topped bar with a dirty cloth and said that Saint-Basile-les-Pins was where I meant; he knew of a Millar at L’Hermitage but had never seen him. He said that there was a woman called Millar who sometimes came into the village on Thursdays – market day – but they were really not known in Bargemon. They belonged across the valley in the forest area.

I took my key from Madame Mazine. The Dutch had caught me up. I said I’d be out for lunch the next day, and asked for my coffee at seven-thirty.

The light from the elephant-lamp was over-bright, but I felt extremely happy, undressed, washed my face and did my teeth, had a pee in the swirling water, and got into bed; wriggled about in the lumps and in a moment or so found a small valley and settled down to sleep.

Which, of course, I did not.

I suppose that I might have gone off into a deep sleep for about half an hour, not more, and then shatteringly, blindingly, I was wide awake again. Alert, filled with fear, a sort of creeping terror which slid into my veins and suffused my entire being.