I feel like this book is brilliantly done. This chapter, Louis is confronted with a reality that makes him uncomfortable. He likes to think of women as beautiful things that just appear out of nowhere for his enjoyment but now he is faced with one of those women's family and childhood home. He is confronted with the dirt and reality of the real world and it disturbs him. Then the daughter. I believe they are implying that this girl, Mary, is his daughter? One he didn't know about? He does after all have sex with the women who work for him. He looks at her and is confronted with the image of his own beloved daughter and how very easily it could have been her. It reminds me of scrooge and the ghosts of christmas. This girl is a haunting ghost of his beloved daughter. But of course, he can't process this. So he does what most uncomfortable men do, he blames the girl (her lack of proper control over her expression) for making him feel this way. I was really struck by this scene. I also was struck by how eagerly the grandparents wanted to send their granddaughter into the very house where their daughter had just died. Is this desperation? Or is it selfishness? Another comment on how poor girls are deemed disposable?

I also would like to go back to the line at the end of chapter six, "a definition of innocence, not knowing what one was capable of". There is this maintenance of innocence and purity, acquired by keeping the suffering and reality of others far away from yourself, so it doesn't taint you with thoughts of it. The reality that he has so far managed to keep at the periphery is unseemly, so his way of dealing with it is to turn away from it, to rid himself of it and the guilt of his role in creating it.