coating the pool! Whew! How chill and cold they were, the poor, dead, ogling mermaids! . . .
Dead: were they dead? . . . Were they ogling and laughing . . . with eyes of gold? . . . He shivered as though ice-cold water were trickling down his spine; and he wrapped himself closely in his military great-coat. He felt something hard in his breast-pocket, a square piece of cardboard. Yes, he had been carrying that about for ever so long . . . and yet . . . and yet he couldn't do it. It was the photograph of his children, the latest group, taken for Mamma's last birthday. For weeks he had been carrying it about in his pocket, in an envelope with an address on it . . . and yet, yet he couldn't send it or hand it in at her door. The portrait of all his children:
"I expect they're charming kiddies, Gerrit?"
Gad, how could she have asked it, how could she have asked it, as though to drive him mad? . . . Whew, how cold it was! . . . He looked fearsomely at the mermaids: no, no, there was nothing, nothing but the chilly pool. He was in a high fever, that's what he was . . . Gad, how could she ask such a thing?
Still . . . still, it was over. She was no longer the girl she was. She was finished with, done for; she had lain in his arms like a corpse, tired of her own kisses, broken by his embrace, white as a sheet, done for. . . . Lord, how rotten, to be done for
