deepen around him. . . . Never had he felt so full of heavy melancholy in his heavy, heavy soul.
She, against him, lay like a corpse. He felt her like a bundle of down, of lace, soft and flabby as a pillow, still in his arms. He would have liked to fling her away from him, weary, sick of that tepid flabbiness. But he kept her in his arms, made her lie against him, suffered the tepid heap of lace and down on his chest. Her eyelids hung closed, as though she would never raise them again. Her mouth hung down, as though she would never laugh again. And yet he continued to hold her like that. It was not because of his sentimentality, for she was anything but a chocolate-box picture now, and it was not out of a sudden recrudescence of rough sensuality that he now held that flabby bundle in his arms: no, it was from a real, genuine, but heavy and melancholy feeling, a feeling of pity. He had been able to wash the make-up from her face with a towel, but he couldn't fling her from him now, before she herself should raise herself from his arms. And she remained lying, like a corpse. God, what a time it lasted! . . . Still, he couldn't do it: he continued to suffer her there, on his heart. He looked down at her askance, without moving; and his eyes grew moist. . . . Those confounded eyes of his, which grew moist! He couldn't help it: they just grew moist. He screwed them up, wiped them with his free hand, before Pauline could see
