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“Nothing. You mean to say ... why d’you talk such nonsense? D’you think I’m a fool to be taken in by rubbish like that?”

“Well, then, why did you sit just as if you’d seen him?”

“I’m a bit tired to-night, that’s what it is. We went a long way. The wine’ll pull me together.”

He poured out another glass.

“You don’t mean to say,” he continued, “you believe in the Devil?”

“Don’t you?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Why not! Why should I? Nobody does—me, I mean. That sort of thing is all very well for women.”

Bouvier said nothing, but sat with his arms on the table, staring out towards the desert. He looked at the empty road just in front of him, let his eyes travel along until it disappeared into the night.

“I say, that sort of thing is all very well for women,” repeated Lemaire.

“I hear you.”

“But I want to know whether you don’t think the same.”

“As you?”

“Yes; to be sure.”

“I might have done once.”

“But you don’t now?”

“There’s a devil in the desert; that’s certain.”

“Why?”

“Because I tell you he came out of the desert to turn my wife wrong.”