'You're so nice!' Josette said, clinging to him and offering him her mouth. He turned his face away. 'I disgust you?' she murmured in a voice so humble that Henri felt suddenly ashamed, ashamed of being on the side of right. He was a man facing a woman, a man with money, a name, culture, and, above all, principles! A little tarnished lately, those principles, but they still gave the illusion of being there. At times, he himself was taken in.

He kissed the mouth stained with salty tears. 'No, I disgust myself,' he said.

'You?'

She looked at him with eyes that understood nothing, and he kissed her again, feeling pity well up in him. What principles had they given her? What weapons? What hopes? There had been the slaps from her mother, the vulgarities of men, the humiliating beauty, and now there had been planted in her heart a remorse which bewildered her.