Someone touches his shoulder. He has to brace himself against the sloping wall to avoid falling over. Marie-Laure stands behind him in her nightdress. The violins spiral down, then back up. Etienne takes Marie-Laure's hand and together, beneath the low, sloping roof--the record spinning, the transmitter sending it over the ramparts, right through the bodies of the Germans and out to sea--they dance. He spins her; her fingers flicker through the air. In the candlelight, she looks of another world, her face all freckles, and in the center of the freckles those two eyes hang unmoving like the egg cases of spiders. They do not track him, but they do not unnerve him, either; they seem almost to see into a separate, deeper place, a world that consists only of music. Graceful. Lean. Coordinated as she whirls, though how she knows what dancing is, he could never guess. The song plays on. He lets it go too long. The antenna is still up, probably dimly visible against the sky; the whole attic might as well shine like a beacon. But in the candlelight, in the sweet rush of the concerto, Marie-Laure bites her lower lip, and her face gives off a secondary glow, reminding him of the marshes beyond the town walls, in those winter dusks when the sun has set but isn't fully swallowed, and big patches of reeds catch red pools of light and burn--places he used to go with his brother, in what seems like lifetimes ago. This, he thinks, is what the numbers mean. The concerto ends. A wasp goes tap tap tap along the ceiling. The transmitter remains on, the microphone tucked into the bell of the electrophone as the needle traces the outermost groove. Marie-Laure breathes heavily, smiling. After she has gone back to sleep, after Etienne has blown out his candle, he kneels for a long time beside his bed. The bony figure of Death rides the streets below, stopping his mount now and then to peer into windows. Horns of fire on his head and smoke leaking from his nostrils and, in his skeletal hand, a list newly charged with addresses. Gazing first at the crew of officers unloading from their limousines into the chateau. Then at the glowing rooms of the perfumer Claude Levitte. Then at the dark tall house of Etienne LeBlanc. Pass us by, Horseman. Pass this house by.