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Most of the clerks had not turned up.
The girls were not due till 8.30. As he was changing his coat, he heard
a voice behind him say:
"Paul, Paul, I want you."
It was Fanny, the hunchback, standing at the top of her stairs, her face
radiant with a secret. Paul looked at her in astonishment.
"I want you," she said.
He stood, at a loss.
"Come on," she coaxed. "Come before you begin on the letters."
He went down the half-dozen steps into her dry, narrow, "finishing-off"
room. Fanny walked before him: her black bodice was short--the waist was
under her armpits--and her green-black cashmere skirt seemed very
long, as she strode with big strides before the young man, himself so
graceful. She went to her seat at the narrow end of the room, where the
window opened on to chimney-pots. Paul watched her thin hands and her
flat red wrists as she excitedly twitched her white apron, which was
spread on the bench in front of her. She hesitated.
"You didn't think we'd forgot you?" she asked, reproachful.


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