Ambiguous Adventure

Samba meets Lucienne in a café. He thinks about how it has been some time since their last meeting, and although he could have made the time to meet her, “no more could he avow the reason for his sudden withdrawal: the impossibility of enduring any longer the calm inquiry of those blue eyes which the girl had fixed on him since the first moments of their meeting” (122). After their examinations, on which they both did well, he made this appointment to see her at a café. Rather than engaging in their usual lighthearted wit, Lucienne instead questions Samba and asks if his reluctance to meet her was due to her behavior at the dinner party. She informs him that she is a member of the Communist Party, a fact he already knows because he saw her distribute leaflets prior. He admits to her that this makes him admire her more. Samba then acknowledges the differences between himself and Lucienne: While they are both passionate in their beliefs, she fights for “liberty” while he fights for “God” (126). In response, Lucienne wonders whether it is possible to “cur[e]” Samba’s people of the “part of themselves which weighs them down” (126), to which Samba replies that he is unsure.