telling him that in the lives of people like Olga and Hellgren and all the rest of the bohemian herd, gentlemanliness was not only a ludicrous garment but a positive hindrance to hygienic self-expression. They don't wear it, argued his daemon; why should you?
And the image came insistently back, keeping him awake by night, sending him off into blind alleys by day, tying him into knots, and driving him into the corner of town where Marthe and her bedraggled colleagues touched elbows in the mean light that filtered through orange cotton lampshades bedecked with purple crepe roses, drinking bad alcohol to reassure themselves of their right to exist.
On two or three occasions Marthe had been absent, and when she did appear she showed traces of the hysteria that had often made him fear for her. It was a singular fact that when he arrived in good spirits her own thermometer fell, and she would either whip herself into a state of despondency or break into mirthful obscenities. On the other hand if he were in low spirits, her solicitude never failed, and out of such moments would spring the tender, ripe, and stoical comments which were so much stronger than Marthe's own ability to guide herself by them. She was like a mariner who, at the bidding of orders which cannot be disputed, has uncomplainingly left port on a ship he knows to be unseaworthy.
For weeks he kept his resolve. True, he went oftener than before to Floss's, but that, he argued, was
