Quotation from: The Arrow of Gold

Written by: Joseph Conrad

I heard them as I would have heard any other words, for she had
that kind of voice which carries a long distance. But the maid's
statement occupied all my mind. "Madame n'est pas heureuse." It
had a dreadful precision . . . "Not happy . . ." This unhappiness
had almost a concrete form--something resembling a horrid bat. I
was tired, excited, and generally overwrought. My head felt empty.
What were the appearances of unhappiness? I was still naive enough
to associate them with tears, lamentations, extraordinary attitudes
of the body and some sort of facial distortion, all very dreadful
to behold. I didn't know what I should see; but in what I did see
there was nothing startling, at any rate from that nursery point of
view which apparently I had not yet outgrown.