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in fact … total strangers, changing every day. And in the midst of furniture belonging to anyone. Imagine those beds … just for a second, just one second, darling, imagine yourself a prostitute and you’ll see what I mean.…”
    She expatiated on this theme for some time, since Séverine did not reply; her silence drove Renée to paint the most turbid, hideous picture she could in order to draw some reaction from such an obstinate creature.
    She failed to do so; but if she had seen Séverine’s expression in the half-light, she would have been terrified. Her face was frozen, caught in some invisible mold, unbreathing. Séverine felt that she was dying; her limbs were so heavy it seemed impossible that she could ever move them again. She didn’t know what was happening to her, but she was never to forget thatcadaverous moment nor the unspeakable anguish which stopped her heart. There passed before her eyes waves of cloudy flames through which appeared nude, contorted bodies. She wanted to shut her eyes with her fingers, for her lids were as rigid as the rest of her body, but her hands remained helpless beside her.
    Enough, enough, she would have screamed at Renée if she’d been able.
    Each of her friend’s phrases, each loathsome image conjured up, sank into Séverine, seemed to take advantage of her lethargy and to lodge, charged with vitality, in the depths of her being.
    Séverine, never knew how she got out of the taxi, nor how she reached home. True consciousness only returned in her own room, and there only because of a sudden shock.
    Since her recovery, Séverine had been in the habit of entering her room and going straight to the big mirror which she used while dressing. Now she went and stood motionless in front of her reflection, so close she seemed to want to melt into her image. In the icy mystery of the mirror she became aware of herself. At first her stupor was such, her defense-mechanism so strong, that she thought she was staring at a stranger. Then she realized that this woman drawing nearer was her double, part of herself, and she wanted to detach herself from that reflection, to escape an act of possession she didn’t desire. But a fierce fascination held her there. She had to know who was leaning toward her. She could not have explained it, but it seemed imperative that she examine this person who faced her.
    She inspected her image with excruciating clarity. Chalky cheeks, nude forehead bulging above hollow eyes, abnormally developed, red, yet lifeless lips: all produced such an impression of panic and bestiality that Séverine couldn’t bear to see herself a second longer. She ran to the door to escape, to put as much ground as possible between herself and that curdled, thin and frightful figure in her mirror. But when she twisted the door handle, it wouldn’t open. She realized she had locked herself in, and a quick heat flooded her face.
    “I wanted to hide,” she said aloud.
    Then, with a revival of her pride and honesty, she violently flung the door wide and muttered, “Hide from whom?”
    But she didn’t go beyond the doorway. She felt sure that the reflection in the mirror was still alive, quite close to her. Would it re-appear outside the room where she’d first surprised it?
    Séverine shut the door behind her, steered her eyes clear of anything that might reflect an image of herself, and collapsed into a chair. She pressed her roaring, burning temples between her icy fists. Gradually her cold hands calmed her queer fever, and at last she found herself able to think; all that she had so far felt were instinctive sensations, chaotic impulses which she was already forgetting. Even the memory of her desperate animal-mask in the mirror was blurred.
    Séverine emerged from this disordered state feeling an intolerable sense of shame. She felt eternally soiledand it seemed to her that not only was she unable to wash herself clean, but that she didn’t even want to.
    “What’s wrong