Yevgeny Zamyatin — We [1285]

The woman smiled and was stubbornly silent. I noticed she had sharp and very white teeth, and that was pretty. … When they began to pump the air out of the Bell, she threw her head back, half closed her eyes; her lips were tightly shut—it reminded me of something. She looked at me, gripping hard the arms of the chair—looked until her eyes closed altogether. — Yevgeny Zamyatin, We, 1285

Note

The chilling aestheticization of torture, where the narrator registers his former lover’s agony solely through the lens of visual prettiness.