Tears streaked down her perspiring face; she ignored them. Perhaps she had shed so many that her skin had become insensitive to them. I felt like weeping with her over that love which for ten years had been the meaning and the pride of her life and which had now become a shameful sore. I took a sip of the Scotch and squeezed the glass in my hand, as if it were a talisman. 'I'd rather die of suffering,' I said to myself, 'than ever sneeringly scatter the ashes of my past to the winds.'