This comment, which would once have struck him as in a league with such banalities as You look so good I could just eat you up now seemed not banal at all.
The cross began to droop toward the ground as the trooper approached the window in which Paul sat, his gray invalids face framed by jags of broken glass. He heard it but did nothing with the hearing of it; it was unconnected sound which ran into his head and then out again like water running through a flume.