“Why kiss you, Sorbet?” she managed to say before her lips were closed. He drew her ungraciously and roughly into his arms, and started kissing her on the mouth. She covered him, docilely, with her inertia. He was supposed to be performing a miracle of bringing the dead to life. Gone about too crudely, the willing mountebank, Death, had been offended. It is not thus that great spirits are prevailed upon to flee. Her “indifference”—the great, simulated, and traditional—would not be ousted by an upstart and younger relative. By Tarr himself, grown repentant, yes. But not by another “indifference.” Then his brutality stung her offended spirit, that had been pursing itself up for so many hours. Tears began rolling tranquilly out of her eyes in large dignified drops. They had not been very far back in the wings. He received them frigidly. She was sure, thought he, to detect something unusual during this scene. Then with the woman’s bustling, desperate, possessive fury, she suddenly woke up. She disengaged her arms wildly and threw them round his neck, tears becoming torrential. Underneath the poor comedian that played such antics with such phlegmatic and exasperating persistence, this distressed being thrust up its trembling mask, like a drowning rat. Its finer head pierced her blunter wedge. “Oh! dis, Sorbet! Est-ce que tu m’aime? M’aime-tu? Dis!” “Yes, you know. Don’t cry.” A wail, like the buzzing on a comb covered with paper followed. “Oh, dis; m’aimes-tu? Dis que tu m’aime!” A blurting, hurrying personality rushed right up into his face. It was like the sightless clammy charging of a bat. More eloquent regions had ambushed him. Humbug had mysteriously departed. It was a blast of knifelike air in the middle of their hot-house. He stared at her face groping up as though it scented troubles in his face. It pushed to right and then to left and rocked itself. Intelligent and aware, it lost this intensity. A complicated image developed in his mind as he stood with her. He was remembering Schopenhauer. It was of a Chinese puzzle of boxes within boxes, or of insects’ discarded envelopes. A woman had in the middle of her a kernel, a sort of very substantial astral baby. This baby was apt to swell. She then became _all_ baby. The husk he held was a painted mummy-case. He was a mummy-case too. Only he contained nothing but innumerable other painted cases inside, smaller and smaller ones. The smallest was not a substantial astral baby, however, or live core, but a painting like the rest. His kernel was a painting. That was as it should be! He was half sitting on the table. He found himself patting her back. He stopped doing this. His face looked heavy and fatigued. A dull, intense infection of her despair had filled it. He held her head gently against his neck. Or he held her skull against his neck. She shook and sniffed softly.