SHE WOULD LIKE to touch the soft hair growing there on the back of his neck: it is the palest, finest pelt, like that of a very young child. She would like to stretch out a finger and stroke it, so tenderly that even he would not know that he had been touched. But she cannot brush against anything with just a fingertip. Were she to touch M. Pujol, he would feel a paw. He would feel a warm weight falling eagerly, clumsily, on the back of his neck.
The flatulent man straightens; the silvery pelt vanishes beneath his collar; he is holding out his hand to take her orange. May I, he asks, and when she relinquishes it, she finds that all the pleasure she once took in her disfigurement—the pleasure of being waited upon, petted, made a spectacle of—all that pleasure has disappeared.