[The Long Night by Stanley Weyman]@TWC D-Link bookThe Long Night CHAPTER III 12/29
But her face showed dull and apathetic; as she stood looking down at the men, suffering them to do what they would with her hand, a strange passivity was its sole expression.
When the big man (whose name Claude learned later was Basterga), after inspecting the palm, kissed it with mock passion, and so surrendered it to Grio, who also pressed his coarse lips to it, while the young man beside Claude laughed, no change came over her.
Released, she turned again to the hearth, impassive.
And Claude, his heart beating, recognised that this was the hundredth performance; that so far from being a new thing it was a thing so old as to be stale to her, moving her less, though there were insult and derision in every glance of the men's eyes, than it moved him. And noting this he began in a dim way to understand.
This was the thing which Tissot had not been able to bear; which in the end had driven the young man with the small chin from the house.
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