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222 He caught her in his arms. He felt her flesh, soft and flabby, as though he were grasping wadding or lace, not as though he were grasping the woman whom he remembered in his glowing memories, a woman of warm marble.

She roused herself, in her desire. She strained her muscles, embraced him with force, with all the science of passion which she had acquired during the years. They embraced each other wholly; and their embrace was full of despair for both of them, as though they were both plunging with their intense happiness into a black abyss, instead of soaring to the stars. . ..

She now lay against him like a corpse. Never had he felt so full of heavy melancholy in his heavy, heavy soul. Never had his whole, whole life passed before him like that, suddenly, in a flash: his boyhood, Buitenzorg, the river, Constance; his young years as a subaltern, his reckless period, the period of inexhaustible, gay, brutal, young life; and, after that very youthful period, still many long years of youth, with Pauline herself still young, warm marble; and then the sobering down, his marriage and oh, the golden dawn of his children! . . . He was not old, he was not old, but everything had arrived. . . . Nothing, nothing more would come but the dragging past of the monotonous years; and, with each year, the bright circles would shift farther and farther apart and the gloom would