escort. They drove slowly off along the hot and crowded street, with
its long-drawn-out tangle of polyglot shops, foreign-looking restaurants
and delicatessen establishments. Every one who was not feverishly busy
was seated either at the open windows of the second or third floor, or
out on the pavement below. The city seemed to be exuding the soaked-in
heat of the long summer's day. The women who floated by were dressed in
the lightest of muslins; even the plainest of them gained a new charm in
their airy and butterfly-looking costumes. The men walked bareheaded,
waistcoatless, fanning themselves with straw hats. Here and there, as
they turned into Shaftesbury Avenue, an immaculately turned-out young
man in evening dress passed along the baked pavements and dived into one
of the theatres. Notwithstanding the heat, there seemed to be a sort of
voluptuous atmosphere brooding over the crowded streets. The sky over
Piccadilly Circus was almost violet and the luminous, unneeded lamps had
a festive effect. The strain of a long day had passed. It was the
pleasure-seekers alone who thronged the thoroughfares. Tallente turned
and looked into the corner of the cab, to meet a soft, reflective gleam
in Nora's eyes.

"Isn't London wonderful!" she murmured dreamily. "On a night like this
it always seems to me like a great human being whose pulses you can see
heating, beating all the time."

Tallente, a person very little given to self-analysis, never really
understood the impulse which prompted him to lean towards her, the
slightly quickening sense of excitement with which he sought for the
kindness of her eyes. Suddenly he felt his fingers clasped in hers, a
warm, pleasant grasp, yet which somehow or other seemed to have the
effect of a barrier.