»My darling,« the woman was murmuring, her hands still clasped behind her head.
He glanced at her and frowned. Her eyes were blissfully closed; a happy, unthinking smile upon her lips expressed an unquenchable thirst, an insatiable hunger, as though she had just tasted something and was preparing for more.
He looked down on her and frowned—on her thin soft arms, on the dark hollows of her armpits; and he got up without any haste. With a last effort to save something precious—life or reason, or the good old Truth—without any flurry, but solemnly, he began dressing himself. He could not find his collar.
»Tell me, have you seen my collar?«
»Where are you going?« The woman looked round. Her hands fell away from her head, and the whole of her strained forward towards him.
»I am going away.«
»You are going away?« she repeated, dragging the words. »You are going? Where?«
He smiled derisively.
»As if I had nowhere to go! I am going to my comrades.«
»To the fine folk? Have you cheated me?«