But the annoyance was telling on her.
Sometimes, from her window, she saw Smull’s limousine pass and repass her door, and the man’s red face at the window peering up at her house.
At times the car stood for hours on Greenwich Avenue, where its occupant commanded a view of Jane Street.
More than once, on the street, Smull had accosted her, even followed on behind her.
Lately, too, it became apparent to the girl that her husband also had been watching and spying on her, because he wrote a violent, crazy letter insisting that she warn Smull to keep his car out of her neighbourhood:
“—I’ve been keeping tabs on you,” he wrote. “Now, I’ll keep an eye on that”—unprintable epithets followed, nauseating Eris; and she burned the letter without reading the remainder.
One evening in early August Albert Smull, standing beside his car on Greenwich Avenue and waiting for Eris to leave her house, noticed a shabby individual apparently watching him from the opposite corner.
On a similar occasion, a day or two later, he noticed the same shabby man on the same corner, staring steadily across the street at him.
After a few recurrent glances, a vague idea came into Smull’s brain that the shabby man’s features were familiar to him.
Ordinary cowardice was not Smull’s kind. He walked leisurely across the street and came up to the shabby man and coolly scrutinised him.