Through dinner she felt a gradual icy coldness stealing through her like novocaine. She had made up her mind. It seemed as if she had set the photograph of herself in her own place, forever frozen into a single gesture. An invisible silk band of bitterness was tightening around her throat, strangling. Beyond the plates, the ivory pink lamp, the broken pieces of bread, his face above his shirtfront jerked and nodded; the flush grew on his cheeks; his nose caught the light now on one side, now on the other, his taught lips moved eloquently over his yellow teeth. Ellen felt herself sitting with her ankles crossed, rigid as a porcelain figure under her clothes, everything about her seemed to be growing hard and enameled, the air bluestreaked with cigarettesmoke, was turning to glass. His wooden face of a marionette wagged senselessly in front of her. She shuddered and hunched up her shoulders.