The House of the Sleeping Beauties

But I have a ghost here inside me. You have one too.

"To die on a night like this, with a young girl's skin to warm him, that would be paradise for an old man."

"An old man lives next door to death."

"She may be asleep, but she's still flesh and blood."

"Is it some devil in there trying to laugh at me?"
"Nothing as simple, I'm afraid. You're making too much of your own sentimentality, and your dissatisfaction at not being able to die."

Was there something in the girl to quiet the bad impulses in an old man?

No woman, however beautiful, could conceal her age when she was at her best asleep.

"I must ask you not to be difficult. Just take sleeping girls as sleeping girls."