person speaking to herself, she asked, in that voice slightly harsh
yet mellow and always irritated:

"Why do you keep on coming here?"

"Why do I keep on coming here?" I repeated, taken by surprise. I
could not have told her. I could not even tell myself with
sincerity why I was coming there. "What's the good of you asking a
question like that?"

"Nothing is any good," she observed scornfully to the empty air,
her chin propped on her hand, that hand never extended to any man,
that no one had ever grasped--for I had only grasped her shoulder
once--that generous, fine, somewhat masculine hand. I knew well
the peculiarly efficient shape--broad at the base, tapering at the
fingers--of that hand, for which there was nothing in the world to
lay hold of. I pretended to be playful.

"No! But do you really care to know?"

She shrugged indolently her magnificent shoulders, from which the
dingy thin wrapper was slipping a little.

"Oh--never mind--never mind!"

There was something smouldering under those airs of lassitude. She
exasperated me by the provocation of her nonchalance, by something
elusive and defiant in her very form which I wanted to seize. I
said roughly: