At night, when they found themselves face to face, placid in appearance and like strangers to one another, storms of passion and dismay passed beneath the calm flesh of their countenance.

And while with Therese, there were outbursts of fury, base ideas, and cruel jeers, with Laurent there were sombre brutalities, and poignant indecisions.

Neither dared search to the bottom of their beings, to the bottom of that cloudy fever that filled their brains with a sort of thick and acrid vapour.
When they could press the hands of one another behind a door, without speaking, they did so, fit to crush them, in a short rough clasp.

They would have liked, mutually, to have carried off strips of their flesh clinging to their fingers.

They had naught but this pressure of hands to appease their feelings.