“There is your fiancée. She seems rather upset.”
Tarr looked towards the door. Bertha’s white face was close up against one of the narrow panes, above the lace curtain. There were four and a half feet of window on either side of the door. There were so many objects and lights in the front well of the shop that her face would not be much noticed in the corner it had chosen.
Her eyes were round, vacant, and dark, the features very white and heavy, the mouth steadily open in painful lines. As he looked the face drew gradually away, and then disappeared into the melodramatic night. It was a large trapped fly on the pane. It withdrew with a glutinous, sweet slowness. The heavy white jowl seemed pulling itself out of some fluid trap where it had been caught like a weighty body.
Tarr knew how the pasty flesh would nestle against the furs, the shoulders swing, the legs move just as much as was necessary for progress, with no movement of the hips. Everything about her in the chilly night would give an impression of warmth and system. The sleek cloth fitting the square shoulders tightly, the underclothes carefully tight as well, the breath from her nostrils the slight steam from a contented machine.
He caught Anastasya’s eye and smiled.
“Your fiancée is pretty,” she said, pretending that was the answer to the smile.
“She’s not my fiancée. But she’s a pretty girl.”
“Oh, I understood you were engaged⸺”
“No.”
“It’s no good,” he thought. But he must spare Bertha in future such discomforting sights.