And this essential thing?
In the eyes of every single person she detected a flame; as if a spark in the brain ignited spontaneously at contact with the things they met and drove them on.

The young women looking into the milliners' windows had that look in their eyes; and elderly men turning over books in the second-hand book-shops, and eagerly waiting to hear what the price was--the very lowest price--they had it, too.

But she cared nothing at all for clothes or for money either.

Books she shrank from, for they were connected too closely with Ralph.

She kept on her way resolutely through the crowd of people, among whom she was so much of an alien, feeling them cleave and give way before her.
Strange thoughts are bred in passing through crowded streets should the passenger, by chance, have no exact destination in front of him, much as the mind shapes all kinds of forms, solutions, images when listening inattentively to music.