To this, in deep reluctance, with dragging steps, but none the less inevitably, man yields as well.

The desire for companionship, the desire to give, albeit there may be no giving in return, the shuddering sense of the empty room and the silent night come to all of us, however much we may wish for the former conditions of solitude when once they are ours.
It was this common need of bondage, this hatred of the silent emptiness of life that caught the mind of Jack Traill, arrested and held it in the interest of Sally Bishop.
You are never really to know why a man, passing through life, meeting this woman, meeting that, some intimately, some in the vapid chance of acquaintanceship, will in one moment be held by the sight of a certain face.

The table of affinities is the only attempt at regulating the matter, and in these changing times one cannot look even upon that with confidence.
There is a law, however, whatever it may be, and in unconscious obedience to it, Traill kept the face of Sally Bishop persistently before him.

After she had left him at Knightsbridge, he too descended from the 'bus and walked slowly back to Piccadilly Circus.
Casting his eyes round the circle of houses with their brilliant illuminations, he decided, with no anticipation of entertainment, where to dine.

A meal is a ceremony of boredom when it has no pleasurable prospect.