The next time Daniel came, he resumed his seat by the stove, and remained silent for a while. Then, without the slightest warning or apparent motivation, he began to discuss religion. And how? With the old spirit of defiance, as if from an ambuscade from which he could send out his poisoned arrows, with calculating maliciousness and cold rebellion, with the air of a man who has been defeated, who is now being pursued, and who is willing to concede more to the earthly order of things than to the divine. Thus he sat, the incarnation of blasphemy, and once more shuffled the features of his face until he looked like the sedulous ape.
Eleanore felt that he was denying both himself and God, and that with violence. She went over to him, and laid her hand on his shoulder. Gertrude, a death-like pallor playing over her face, got up, passed by her and Daniel, and did not appear again that evening. Nor did she appear the following evening. From that time on she avoided his presence.
For one remarkable second and no longer, Daniel fixed his eyes on the shape of Gertrude's legs. He became suddenly conscious of the fact that she was a woman and he was a man. During this second, one of the rarest of his life, he perceived the outer surface of her body, but without the enveloping clothes. He thought of her as a nude figure. It lasted only a second, but he pictured her to himself as a nude. Everything she had said and done fell from her like so much clothing.
He had a feeling that his eyes had been opened; that he had really seen for the first time in his life; and that what he now saw was the body of the world.
The nude picture followed him. He fought against his disquietude. Nothing like this had ever happened to him before. He conjured up the picture in order to destroy it with coolness and composure; but it would not be destroyed, nor would it vanish. One day he chanced to meet Gertrude by the beautiful fountain. He stopped, stood as if petrified, and forgot to speak to her.
It was a cold, clear day in the middle of December. Eleanore wanted to go skating after dinner. She was known in the entire city for her skill on the ice. An irrepressible vivacity and sense of freedom pulsed through her body. It seemed to her lamentable that she should have to sit down in the overheated, sticky air of the office among all those clerks, and write.