"Sure there is nothing I could offer you that would mean anything?"
"Quite!"
But, though she repeated the word with extra emphasis, she felt all at once the beginning of a dangerous curiosity. After all, was there nothing he could offer her, who had gone so long, tired of foot and discouraged of heart, that might not cause her to pause and at least experience a regret—for an enormous sum, something fantastic, which no man would offer? Yet the idea entered into her imagination and stimulated it. How many women would hesitate before a sum so great that it made no difference what people said? From which she began to wonder what might be her price to this experienced connoisseur, who had estimated and bought so many of her sex: Yes, what was his estimate of her resistance? This awoke a zest which soon dominated the lassitude of the afternoon. She must learn this price: it would be more than exciting.
All at once they seemed lifted above the city, soaring upward past the last sinking roofs, cleaving into clear air. They were on the great Williamsburg Bridge, the river far below, strewn with dusky moving shapes setting out faint lamps against the darkening day. Across the river gusts of steam or belching smoke thickened the gray horizon. Factories, come down like animals to drink at the riverside, stood in naked profile against the sky, pointing their rigid towers toward the stars, sending occasional flaming blasts across reddening lines of window-panes. Below, like the magic of invisible sprites, the jeweled strands of Brooklyn Bridge were flinging a brilliant span across the gulf of the night. About them, deliriously below, were the thousand waking eyes of mysterious hours, starting from the regimented lamp-posts that cut the city into squares of black. All about them was that day of the city which is the creation of man, which he has created in the need of forgetfulness, of doubling the span of his few allotted years in a sort of Promethean revolt. The day often oppressed her—the night never. She sat up, smiling and alert, and as if for the first time taking notice of where she was and where she was going, asked:
"What time is it?"
"Half past five only."
But she began to feel a menace in this other bank which they were nearing, in these long stretches of human wilderness leading to the sound. Sassoon was entirely too docile, she did not know why, but she scented danger in the air.
"We will go back," she said suddenly. "Brooklyn is too dreary; besides, it's late for tea."
"I'm sorry," he said, stirring in his seat; "I'm afraid you don't trust me?"
"No, I don't—not too far!"