“Monsieur, would it disturb you?” Élodie is standing by his table, her eyebrows raised in inquiry. She gestures from the empty chair facing Harry to a figure waiting by the bar. “I am sorry, but we are very full today.”

A family is occupying the greater part of the restaurant with loud bonhomie. They are raising glasses and making toasts to a white-haired woman at the head of the table.

“No, I don’t mind at all. Please.” He stands and beckons his arm toward the stranger. As the man approaches Harry’s table, he recognizes a face. He puts out his hand. “I think we may have passed earlier today?”

The stranger shakes Harry’s hand. “In the cemetery, yes? My name is Gabriel Bousquet and this is very kind.” He takes the opposite chair.

“Harry Blythe.”

“If you wish to be quiet, I will not disturb your thoughts.”

“No, not at all. I am pleased to make your acquaintance.”

“Excellent. I am happy to practice my English. I like to collect English words—like butterflies.” His eyes slide upward as he searches for the word. “But, like butterflies, they flap away from me.” He makes his fingers into a busy flutter of wings. They float back down to the tablecloth and he looks up and laughs.

For a second Harry thinks of the catalogue in Arras, the collections of eyes and noses and mouths awaiting identification. His mind flicks through iterations before they still into the features across the table. Gabriel Bousquet’s eyes are green, set widely apart, and amused. His face is all triangles, so that he looks somehow catlike. Harry finds himself mentally calculating the angles of Gabriel’s face, thinking how he would put it down onto paper. He grins at the girl as she delivers bread and wine to the table. She blushes in the white glare of Gabriel’s smile.

“I hope that I didn’t disturb you in the cemetery,” Harry says.

“No. Not at all.” Gabriel rolls up his shirtsleeves before he pours the wine. “I saw you taking photographs. Is it the grave of a member of your family?”

“No. I was taking a photograph for the man’s mother. She cannot travel here.”

“Ah, so she will be able to see where her son is?”

“That is the idea.”

Gabriel sighs and blows his fringe in the air. “What a thing!”

“Quite.”

Harry feels embarrassed to explain it. He realizes, as he describes the arrangement to Gabriel, that it is not so much the principle that he has any moral difficulty with, or the taking of the photograph itself, but the fact that he is receiving a salary for undertaking the task. Though he knows that Mrs. Evans may find some comfort in finally knowing her son is properly buried, he does not like being paid for delivering this sadness.

“And so you are normally a photographer in England?”