Sometimes, tormented, he would come running to her, stopping abruptly, putting it to her this way:
“Somebody has said something to me.”
“When—where?”
“Now, in the café.”
“What?”
“I don’t know, a reproach——”
She would say:
“We are all, unfortunately, only what we are.”
She had a large and beautiful angora cat, it used to sit in the tray of amethysts and opals and stare at her from very bright cold eyes. One day it died, and calling her lover to her she said:
“Take her out and bury her.” And when he had buried her he came back, his lips twitching.