For a long time reading had been her chief
solace. But she could not read. She glanced round the inhospitable
chamber, and thought of the hundreds of rooms--some splendid and
some vile, but all arid in their unwelcoming aspect--through which
she had passed in her progress from mad exultation to calm and
cold disgust. The ceaseless din of the street annoyed her jaded
ears. And a great wave of desire for peace, peace of no matter
what kind, swept through her. And then her deep distrust of Gerald
reawakened; in spite of his seriously desperate air, which had a
quality of sincerity quite new in her experience of him, she could
not be entirely sure that, in asserting utter penury, he was not
after all merely using a trick to get rid of her.
She sprang up, threw the book on the bed, and seized her gloves.
She would follow him, if she could. She would do what she had
never done before--she would spy on him. Fighting against her
lassitude, she descended the long winding stairs, and peeped forth
from the doorway into the street. The ground floor of the hotel
was a wine-shop; the stout landlord was lightly flicking one of
the three little yellow tables that stood on the pavement.
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