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The next morning, Paula went quietly to the hospital with me, and Mardrus promised me she'd be cured — a matter of a few weeks or a few months. She'd be cured, but once in the street again I asked myself anxiously, 'What exactly are they going to cure her of? And afterwards, who will she be?' Oh, a…

She threw herself full length on the couch with such violence that the petals of one of the roses on the mantel dropped off. 'I don't understand,' she moaned. 'I don't understand anything any more." She was sobbing, her face hidden in the cushions, and I began saying meaningless words to her, for n…

Robert nodded. 'You're right: something doesn't ring true. And I'll tell you what it is: I'm too old.'

'What's your age got to do with it?'

'I realize only too well that many of the things I once set store by are no longer important; I'm being led to want a future very different from the one …

'Why do I write?' Robert said. 'Because man doesn't live by bread alone and because I believe in the need for that added element. I write in order to capture all the things action ignores - the truths of the moment, the individual, the immediate. Up to now, I thought that that task went hand in han…

A half-hour later, she rang the bell, and I led her into my bedroom. Her hair was hidden under a dark kerchief, and the powder she had spread over her face failed to camouflage her swollen nose. Her breath had a strong odour of mint and cheap wine. Paula had been so beautiful that it never occurred…