Barnet considered his interlocutor.
‘I’m told,’ said Barnet, ‘that Paris is not likely to be possible again for several generations.’
‘Oh! but this is preposterous! Consider, Monsieur! What are people like ourselves to do in the meanwhile? I am a costumier. All my connections and interests, above all my style, demand Paris....’
Barnet considered the sky, from which a light rain was beginning to fall, the wide fields about them from which the harvest had been taken, the trimmed poplars by the wayside.
‘Naturally,’ he agreed, ‘you want to go to Paris. But Paris is over.’
‘Over!’
‘Finished.’
‘But then, Monsieur—what is to become—of me?’
Barnet turned his face westward, whither the white road led.
‘Where else, for example, may I hope to find—opportunity?’