"I love nothing."

I heard in her sullen tone the faint echo of that resentfully
tragic note which I had found once so provoking. But it left me
unmoved except for a sudden and weary conviction of the emptiness
of all things under Heaven.

"Good-bye, Alice," I said.

She did not answer, she did not move. To merely take her hand,
shake it, and go away seemed impossible, almost improper. I
stooped without haste and pressed my lips to her smooth forehead.
This was the moment when I realised clearly with a sort of terror
my complete detachment from that unfortunate creature. And as I
lingered in that cruel self-knowledge I felt the light touch of her
arms falling languidly on my neck and received a hasty, awkward,
haphazard kiss which missed my lips. No! She was not afraid; but
I was no longer moved. Her arms slipped off my neck slowly, she
made no sound, the deep wicker arm-chair creaked slightly; only a
sense of my dignity prevented me fleeing headlong from that
catastrophic revelation.

I traversed the dining-room slowly. I thought: She's listening to
my footsteps; she can't help it; she'll hear me open and shut that
door. And I closed it as gently behind me as if I had been a thief
retreating with his ill-gotten booty. During that stealthy act I
experienced the last touch of emotion in that house, at the thought
of the girl I had left sitting there in the obscurity, with her
heavy hair and empty eyes as black as the night itself, staring