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gave his men keen pleasure for all that. “They need,” he would say to himself, “to be urged on toward a hardy life, with its sufferings and its joys; only that matters.”
    As the car approached the city, Rivière instructed the driver to take him to the Head Office. Presently Robineau found himself alone with Pellerin and a question shaped itself upon his lips.

V
    Robineau was feeling tired tonight. Looking at Pellerin—Pellerin the Conqueror—he had just discovered that his own life was a gray one. Worst of all, he was coming to realize that, for all his rank of inspector and authority, he, Robineau, cut a poor figure beside this travel-stained and weary pilot, crouching in a corner of the car, his eyes closed and hands all grimed with oil. For the first time, Robineau was learning to admire. A need to speak of this came over him and, above all, to make a friend.
    He was tired of his journey and the day’s rebuffs and felt perhaps a little ridiculous. That very evening, when verifying the gasoline reserve, he had botched his figures and the agent, whom he had wanted to catch out, had taken compassion and totted them up for him. What was worse, he had commented on the fitting of a Model B.6 oil pump, mistaking it for the B.4 type, and the mechanics
with ironic smiles had let him maunder on for twenty minutes about this “inexcusable stupidity”—his own stupidity.
    He dreaded his room at the hotel. From Toulouse to Buenos Aires, straight to his room he always went once the day’s work was over. Safely ensconced and darkly conscious of the secrets he carried in his breast, he would draw from his bag a sheet of paper and slowly inscribe
Report
on it, write a line or two at random, then tear it up. He would have liked to save the company from some tremendous peril; but it was not in any danger. All he had saved so far was a slightly rusted propeller-boss. He had slowly passed his finger over the rust with a mournful air, eyed by an airport overseer, whose only comment was: “Better call up the last halt; this plane’s only just in.” Robineau was losing confidence in himself.
    At a venture he essayed a friendly move. “Would you care to dine with me?” he asked Pellerin. “I’d enjoy a quiet chat; my job’s pretty exhausting at times.”
    Then, reluctant to quit his pedestal too soon, he added: “The responsibility, you know.”
    His subordinates did not much relish the idea of intimacy with Robineau; it had its dangers. “If he’s not dug up something for his report, with an appetite like his, I guess he’ll just eat me up!”
    But Robineau’s mind this evening was full of his personal afflictions. He suffered from an annoying eczema, his only real secret; he would have liked to talk about his trouble, to be pitied and, now that pride had played him false, find solace in humility. Then again there was his mistress over
there in France, who had to hear the nightly tale of his inspections whenever he returned. He hoped to impress her thus and earn her love—his usual luck!—he only seemed to aggravate her. He wanted to talk about her, too.
    â€œSo you’ll come to dinner?”
    Good-naturedly Pellerin assented.

VI
    The clerks were drowsing in the Buenos Aires office when Rivière entered. He had kept his overcoat and hat on, like the incessant traveler he always seemed to be. His spare person took up so little room, his clothes and graying hair so aptly fitted into any scene, that when he went by hardly any one noticed it. Yet, at his entry, a wave of energy traversed the office. The staff bustled, the head clerk hurriedly compiled the papers remaining on his desk, typewriters began to click.
    The telephonist was busily slipping his plugs into the standard and noting the telegrams in a bulky register. Rivière sat down and read them.
    All that he read, the Chile episode excepted, told of one of those