Quicksand
scene, this re-encounter. Now she found that rehearsal helped not at all. It was so absolutely different from anything that she had imagined.
In the open taxi they talked of impersonal things, books, places, the fascination of New York, of Harlem. But underneath the exchange of small talk lay another conversation of which Helga Crane was sharply aware. She was aware, too, of a strange ill-defined emotion, a vague yearning rising within her. And she experienced a sensation of consternation and keen regret when with a lurching jerk the cab pulled up before the house in One Hundred and Thirty-ninth Street. So soon, she thought. But she held out her hand calmly, coolly. Cordially she asked him to call some time. “It is,” she said, “a pleasure to renew our acquaintance.” Was it, she was wondering, merely an acquaintance?
He responded seriously that he too thought it a pleasure, and added: “You haven‘t
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