Her short red hair was like a helmet, and under the crimson bulb, dark. At the moment of ecstasy, she turned for the first time to face him, from over her shoulder. Her sharp jaw was distended—like a John Dory, the thought came to him from nowhere—and her eyes were wild. She was not looking at him. She saw beyond, to something else. He could not recognize her again; this was the face of an entirely different person: had he met this one in the street, he would not know her.
 The more he looked at her frenzied eyes, the more strange she appeared, until he conceived her a demon, the devil itself, no woman, no wife he knew. At their mutual orgasm, a chill of irrational fright ran through him, but he closed his eyes, taking in air in huge gulping heaves, uncaring.
Flush fading, consciousness revived, Martin saw Marline collapsed forward across his legs. He was still inside her, the sticky wetness draining down from his crotch and then his buttocks, turning cold on the sheet beneath him. She rolled off, and resting on her side, eyes closed, a smile across her mouth, murmured something about going out again, a nightcap. Then she yawned.
“Napoleon slept here, did you know? Ierapetra’s ‘holy rock’ in Greek,” he said.
Marline was already putting on her clothes.

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