Steiner, La Faloise or Fauchery, had borne away some of it on their

bootsoles. And Muffat, whom the bloodstain preoccupied as much as

it did Zoe, kept studying it in his own despite, as though in its

gradual rosy disappearance he would read the number of men that

passed. He secretly dreaded it and always stepped over it out of a

vivid fear of crushing some live thing, some naked limb lying on the

But in the bedroom within he would grow dizzy and intoxicated and

would forget everything--the mob of men which constantly crossed it,