And through it all, like an arhythmical percussive accompaniment there had been the constant metallic slamming of doors throughout the hotel, each one of which shook the flimsy edifice and resounded through it like a small blast.

he was vaguely aware of having arrived at the edge of a new period in his existence, an unexplored territory of himself through which he was going to have to pass.

The building had the kind of intense and pure shabbiness attained only by cheap new constructions.

Even that annoyed her. She considered the question insolent. It assumed an intimacy which ought to have existed between them, but which for some reason did not. “But why not?” she wondered, looking closely at his satisfied, serious expression. The answer came up ready-made and absurd from her subconscious; it sounded like doggerel. “It doesn’t exis

“Look, my pet,” she said in a conciliatory tone, “Just what do you want in life?” “That’s a hard question,” he said slowly. She had taken the wind out of his sails. “I suppose I want to feel I’m getting something out of it.”

It was typical: a victim always gave himself up if he had dared to dream of changing his status.

He heard the voices arguing around him; they seemed excited, and yet they were talking about nothing. They were loud, and yet they seemed far away. As he fixed one particular part of a monumental shadow stretching away into the darker regions of the ceiling, he had the feeling suddenly that he was seated there surrounded by dead people— or perhaps

Everything he took the trouble to look at carefully seemed to be bristling with an intense but undecipherable meaning: Daisy’s face with its halo of white pillows, the light pouring over the array of bottles on the table, the glistening black floor and the irregular black and white stripes on the skins at his feet, the darker and more distant parts

She liked to remind herself that she came of pioneer stock; her grandmother had had an expression she had always loved to hear her use: “Marching orders have come,” which to her meant that if a thing had to be done, it was better to do it without question, without thinking whether one liked the idea or not.