He remembered all this visually, and it was not exactly pleasurable.

It was rather startling like the discovery of a new faculty in himself.

There are faculties one would rather do without--such, for instance, as seeing through a stone wall or remembering a person with this uncanny vividness.

And what about those two people belonging to her with their air of expectant solicitude! Really, those figures from home got in front of one.

In fact, their persistence in getting between him and the solid forms of the everyday material world had driven Renouard to call on his friend at the office.
He hoped that a little common, gossipy information would lay the ghost of that unexpected dinner-party.