He was about thirty, she forty-five. He was handsome, robust, with manly energy; she lame, fat, and hunch-backed. There ought to have been a neck, but there was none to be seen, for the heavy head appeared to have been put on the chest awry; and all the cruel artifices resorted to for hiding the hump behind seemed made on purpose to produce another in front. Even her features were ugly, and the ill-made hands were laden with rings. Large earrings were in her ears, and a colossal locket surrounded by diamonds, inclosing the man’s portrait, was hanging in front. Husband and wife, no doubt.
She was eating, but could not have known the flavour of the food, for the mouthful went round and round between her teeth, whilst another piece on the fork was waiting in vain for its turn to enter the mouth. That poor deformed being did not cry, that is, no tears fell on her cheeks, but she blew her nose every now and then, and the eyes were moist and sad. She placed the fork automatically from time to time on the plate, with the mouthful still on it, and gazed at the man lovingly, tenderly, waiting, imploring for a look.
But the look never came. With one hand he hastily conveyed the food to his mouth, and with the other held a newspaper, which he was reading with pretended interest, so as not to have the silence interrupted. He did not shed tears nor blow his nose, but he frowned, and he was also suffering one of those intense and hidden agonies to which one does not confess, but which furrow the soul like harrows of steel.
I did not remove my eyes again from that dumb and agonizing scene.
After a long interval she said to him, timidly, hesitatingly, almost as if committing a crime:
“Will you take anything else?”
He started as if the voice had struck him like a blow in the face; he turned to her and twisted his mouth like one seized with a sudden and irresistible disgust.
“No, I want nothing more.”
The No was pronounced angrily and with scorn; it was, and must have been, a blow to her to whom it was addressed. He looked at her a long time, a look full of hatred, remorse, and disgust. It seemed as if he were passing in review all his companion’s ugliness, and as if until that moment he had never seen it so clearly: those wrinkles, that gray hair, that hump, the deformed neck, those arms which looked like hams in sacks, and then those rings and jewels which seemed to jeer at the white, flabby flesh with their brightness. The deformity, the grotesque violation of good taste, suddenly struck that handsome and robust man, for he had sold youth and manhood to an unfortunate woman who had believed it possible to still love and be loved.
The two had plunged into the waves of the sea a little before; they had drunk of the sun’s rays too, but neither sea nor sun had been able to give happiness to these unfortunate creatures who had bartered carnal pleasures for gold, who had changed sacred love to a vile prostitution of flesh and banknotes.