he screamed, and in the scream readjusted her
views concerning air-raids.

"It's queer this swoon lasting such a long time!" he reflected, when
Christine had been deposited on the sofa in the sitting-room, and the
common remedies and tricks tried without result, and Marthe had gone
into the kitchen to make hot water hotter.

He had established absolute empire over Marthe. He had insisted on
Marthe not being silly; and yet, though he had already been
silly himself in his absurd speculations as to the possibility of
Christine's death, he was now in danger of being silly again. Did
ordinary swoons ever continue as this one was continuing? Would
Christine ever come out of it? He stood with his back to the
fireplace, and her head and shoulders were right under him, so that he
looked almost perpendicularly down upon them. Her face was as pale as
ivory; every drop of blood seemed to have left it; the same with
her neck and bosom; her limbs had dropped anyhow, in disarray; a fur
jacket was untidily cast over her black muslin dress. But her waved
hair, fresh from the weekly visit of the professional coiffeur,
remained in the most perfect order.

G.J. looked round the room. It was getting very shabby. Its pale
enamelled shabbiness and the tawdry ugliness of nearly every object
in it had never repelled and saddened him as they did then. The sole
agreeable item was a large photograph of the mistress in a rich silver
frame which he had given her. She would not let him buy knicknacks or
draperies for her drawing-room; she preferred other presents. And now
that she lay in the room, but with no power to animate it, he
knew what the room really looked like; it looked like a dentist's
waiting-room, except that no dentist would expose copies of _La Vie
Parisienne_ to the view of clients. It had no more individuality than
a dentist's waiting-room. Indeed it was a dentist's waiting-room.
He remembered that he had had similar ideas about the room at the
beginning of his acquaintance with Christine; but he had partially
forgotten them, and moreover, they had not by any means been so clear
and desolating as in that moment.

He looked from the photograph to her face. The face was like the
photograph, but in the swoon its wistfulness became unbearable. And
it was so young. What was she? Twenty-seven? She could not be
twenty-eight. No age! A girl! And talk about experience! She had had
scarcely any experience, save one kind of experience. Th