BLOOM: (Smiles, nods slowly.) More, houri, more.
ZOE: And more’s mother? (She pats him offhandedly with velvet paws.) Are you coming into the musicroom to see our new pianola? Come and I’ll peel off.
BLOOM: (Feeling his occiput dubiously with the unparalleled embarrassment of a harassed pedlar gauging the symmetry of her peeled pears.) Somebody would be dreadfully jealous if she knew. The greeneyed monster. (Earnestly.) You know how difficult it is. I needn’t tell you.
ZOE: (Flattered.) What the eye can’t see the heart can’t grieve for. (She pats him.) Come.
BLOOM: Laughing witch! The hand that rocks the cradle.
ZOE: Babby!
BLOOM: (In babylinen and pelisse, bigheaded, with a caul of dark hair, fixes big eyes on her fluid slip and counts its bronze buckles with a chubby finger, his moist tongue lolling and lisping.) One two tlee: tlee tlwo tlone.
THE BUCKLES: Love me. Love me not. Love me.
ZOE: Silent means consent. (With little parted talons she captures his hand, her forefinger giving to his palm the passtouch of secret monitor, luring him to doom.) Hot hands cold gizzard.
(He hesitates amid scents, music, temptations. She leads him towards the steps, drawing him by the odour of her armpits, the vice of her painted eyes, the rustle of her slip in whose sinuous folds lurks the lion reek of all the male brutes that have possessed her.)