and came fully to himself, with that
click of awakeness which is the end, the first shades were closing on
the afternoon. He got up and reached for his watch.

"Quarter past four," he said.

Her eyes stretched wide with surprise as she looked at him. But she
said nothing. The same strange and wide, perhaps insatiable child-like
curiosity was in her eyes as she watched him. He dressed very quickly.
And her eyes were wide, and she said no single word.

But when he was dressed, and bent over her to say goodbye, she put her
arms round him, that seemed such frail and childish arms now, yet withal
so deadly in power. Her soft arms round his neck, her tangle of hair
over his face. And yet, even as he kissed her, he felt her deadly. He
wanted to be gone. He wanted to get out of her arms and her clinging and
her tangle of hair and her curiosity and her strange and hateful power.

"You'll come again. We'll be like this again?" she whispered.

And it was hard for him to realise that this was that other woman, who
had sat so silently on the sofa, so darkly and reservedly, at the tea at
Algy's.

"Yes! I will! Goodbye now!" And he kissed her, and walked straight out
of the room. Quickly he took his coat and his hat, quickly, and left the
house. In his nostrils was still the scent with which the bed linen was
faintly scented--he did not know what it was. But now he wiped his face
and his mouth, to wipe it away.

He had eaten nothing since coffee that morning, and was hungry,
faint-feeling. And his face, and his mind, felt withered. Curiously he
felt blasted as if blighted by some electricity. And he knew, he
knew quite well he was only in possession of a tithe of his natural
faculties. And in his male spirit he felt himself hating her: hating her
deeply, damnably. But he said to himself: "No, I won't hate her. I won't
hate her."

So he went on, over the Ponte Vecchio, where the jeweller's windows on
the bridge were already blazing with light, on into the town. He wanted
to eat something, so he decided to go to a shop he knew, where one could
stand and eat good tiny rolls split into truffle or salami sandwiches,
and drink Marsala. So one after the other he ate little truffle rolls,
and drank a few glasses of Marsala. And then he did not know what to do.
He did not want to eat any more, he had had what he wanted. His hunger
had been more nervous than sensual.

So he went into the street. It was just growing dark and the town w