It looked at Ransom in silence and at last began to smile.We have all often spoken — Ransom himself had often spoken — of a devilish smile. Now he realised that he had never taken the words seriously.The smile was not bitter, nor raging, nor, in an ordinary sense, sinister; it was not even mocking. It seemed to summon Ransom, with a horrible naiveté of welcome, into the world of its own pleasures, as if all men were at one in those pleasures, as if they were the most natural thing in the world and no dispute could ever have occurred about them. It was not furtive, nor ashamed, it had nothing
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