He found her so--as much a child as Sally
had been. Add her beauty to that--a beauty unquestionably greater
than the simple charm of Sally's baby features--and add still again
that fallacious sense of social position by which Traill realized
that such a girl he could not ask promiscuously out to dinner, could
not casually persuade to come to his rooms, and you have, besides
the unavoidable comparison between the two in his mind, that subtle
difference which a life of ease and a life of labour makes in the
position of women to a man's conception of the sex.
Immediately they stepped outside the theatre into the blaze of light
where the attendants were rushing for carriages, and men and women,
in a confused mass, jostled each other to fight free of the crowd,
Traill's eyes searched quickly for a sight of Sally. Mrs. Durlacher
also was alert to the possibility of finding her watching their
movements. But they saw no trace of her.
In the mouth of a little alley, deep with shadows, on the other side
of St. Martin's Lane, she was standing, her heart throbbing, half
timidly, half jealously, yet secure in the knowledge that she was
safe from observation. With eyes, burnt in the fever of a fierce
emotion, she watched them as they stepped into the car that drew up
beneath the lighted portico.
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