No, not even Pauline. When he went to her now, he took a malicious pleasure in telling her so, with rough words, in making her feel it ... both in order to make himself appear rougher than he was and because of the resentment which always kept pricking him sharply.
"I say, you're not a bit like those old photographs of yours now!"
It gave her a shock when he said this. Nothing gave her such a blinding shock, as if the shock had plunged her into darkness and made everything go black and menacing as death.
She felt that it was cruel of him to throw it in her face like this; and she couldn't understand it in him. But, because her eyes were always laughing, even now they laughed their golden laugh....
"Ah, you don't believe it!... You just think you're exactly as you were, the same young and pretty girl.... Well, my beauty, you never made a greater mistake in your life!... But I see you don't believe me, you grin when I tell you, you think your charms are going to live for ever.... Everything wears, child.... However, you won't believe it: I can see your eyes mocking me now...."
Indeed, her eyes were laughing and the smouldering spark of mockery seemed to leap into flame. And, because he spoke like that, she laughed, a loud laugh with a shrill note which annoyed him, in which he heard mockery ... because, after all, though she no longer resembled her old photographs, she had caught him badly.
"Just come here," he said, roughly.
"Why?"
"Just come here."
She went up to him, trembling.