The clock, which had been wheezing for some minutes like an old man
preparing to cough, now struck nine. The sound slightly disturbed
certain somnolent merchants, government officials, and men of
independent means who were lying back in their chairs, chatting,
smoking, ruminating about their affairs, with their eyes half shut;
they raised their lids for an instant at the sound and then closed them
again. They had the appearance of crocodiles so fully gorged by their
last meal that the future of the world gives them no anxiety whatever.
The only disturbance in the placid bright room was caused by a large
moth which shot from light to light, whizzing over elaborate heads of
hair, and causing several young women to raise their hands nervously and
exclaim, "Some one ought to kill it!"
Absorbed in their own thoughts, Hewet and Hirst had not spoken for a
long time.
When the clock struck, Hirst said:
"Ah, the creatures begin to stir. . . ." He watched them raise
themselves, look about them, and settle down again. "What I abhor most
of all," he concluded, "is the female breast. Imagine being Venning and
having to get into bed with Susan! But the really repulsive thing is
that they feel nothing at all--about what I do when I have a hot bath.
They're gross, they're absurd, they're utterly intolerable!"
So saying, and drawing no reply from Hewet, he proceeded to think about
himself, about science, about Cambridge, about the Bar, about Helen and
what she thought of him, until, being very tired, he was nodding off to
sleep.
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