She lay weeping, moaning, at intervals, repeating that desolate
phrase, "What's the use? Oh, what's the use?"
Irremediable loss--it sounded in her voice, it crept coldly in his
burning veins, it came spreading, flooding, filling the whole earth in
the first faint glimmer of dawn. He sat on the edge of the bed, let
his hands fall heavy and inert between his knees, and for a long time
did not change his attitude.
Just now, looking down at her, he had felt a sickness of loathing. He
hated her for the musical note of her voice, the tragic eloquence of
her eyes, and above all he hated her for her nakedness. The almost
nude sprawling form seemed to symbolize the unspeakable shame of his
sex. This was the disgusting female, round and smooth, white and weak,
with tumbling hair and lying lips, the lewd parasite that can drag the
noble male down into hell-fire. Now he looked at her with comparative
indifference, and felt even pity for the broken and soiled thing that
he had believed to be clean and sound.
The fusion of his thoughts was over. One thought had split away from
all the rest, and every moment was becoming more definite, more
logical, more full of excruciating pain. He thought now only of his
enemy, of the human fiend who had destroyed Mavis and himself.
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