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206 And he kept on his guard. Add to that a vague resentment, at not having been able to keep away from her, at having gone to see her in her room; a vague resentment at the thought of his home, of his children, of all that he went back to when he left her room. The way you got used to anything, he would reflect! Now, when he had been to her, he would put his latchkey calmly into his front-door, without feeling his heart beating with nervousness, would undress calmly, would walk into the room where Adeline lay in bed! The way you got used to everything and by degrees came to do things which at first you thought rotten! You did it because you couldn't very well help it. . . and also because your ideas about things, day by day, as you did it, slumbered away into a feeling that you weren't responsible, that it was no use resisting what had got such a hold of you. . . . Nevertheless, when he was with her, he always felt that resentment keenly: it did not slumber away. . . . At Pauline's, he had a keen apprehension of being still more imposed upon, of seeing kindness and charming tenderness in that girl, whereas of course she was nothing but a courtesan who meant to get money out of him. And then, in her small, shabby room, he would roar at her and ask:

"Look here, why can't you leave me alone?"

Her golden eyes gleamed; and he read a secret mockery in them. No, mark you, he'd take jolly