cordant sights and sounds that closed her round, isolating her small, personal, absorbing life in the midst of this flood of life. She drank in the sad gaiety of the hour, the dividing-line between day and night, between the day's work and the quest of repose or pleasure. Its restlessness spoke deeply to her; the fatigue or the expectation of the faces that flashed into view under the lights, the glaring allurements of some streets to the west and to the east, offering food and drink and amusement, the quick roll of a closed carriage up the avenue, a girl passing whose sparkling eyes rested intently on Basil. …
Teresa glanced up at him quickly. Yes, he had seen the girl. Teresa surprised the rapid return of his glance to herself. She hated that other look—the interested, appraising look that betrayed a whole past of fleeting encounters, of fugitive souvenirs. She saw it often, for often Basil was unconscious of it himself, and denied it. She saw the involuntary look that women gave to him. And each such perception cast in its tiny grain to trouble her mind, conscious vaguely of a problem there to solve, of which all the conditions were not as yet known to her.
