He had detected the paint on her cheeks, and had noted with aversion a certain unhealthy bloat in her face, and an alcoholic taint in her breath.

And all these colourless eventless lives depend on the favour of one fat tyrannical man, bloated with good living and authority, himself almost as inert and sedentary as his women, and accustomed to impose his whims on them ever since he ran about the same patio as a little short-smocked boy.