"You tell me," he said, rushing upon destruction.
Then Desire said what she had made up her mind to say.

He never knew exactly what it was because before she actually said the word "Mary," he was too sleepy, and afterwards he was too dazed.
Mary! The word went through him like an electric shock.

It tingled to his criminal toes.

It whirled through his cringing brain like a pinwheel suddenly lighted.

It exploded like a bomb in the recesses of his false content.
Desire was talking about Mary! Talking about her in that frank and unembarrassed way which he had always admired.