depends on pain. Pain is part of joy. We are hungry and then think how we enjoy our food at last. We are thirsty …’ He stopped suddenly, with his eyes glancing away into the shadows, expecting the cruel laugh that did not come. He said, ‘We deny ourselves so that we can enjoy. You have heard of rich men in the north who eat salted foods, so that they can be thirsty—for what they call the cocktail. Before the marriage, too, there is the long betrothal …’ Again he stopped. He felt his own unworthiness like a weight at the back of the tongue. There was a smell of hot wax from where a candle
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