Every eye seemed focussed upon her; and yet she had known the sensation to be the conceit of her imagination.
The beautiful gowns and the flashing bare shoulders and arms of the women had disturbed and distressed her.

Women, she had been taught, who exposed the flesh of their bodies under the eyes of man were in a special catagory of the damned.

Almost instantly she had recognized the fallacy of such a statement.

These women could not be bad, else the hotel would not have permitted them to enter! Still, the scene presented a riddle: to give immunity to the black women who went about all but naked and to damn the white for exposing their shoulders! She had eaten but little; all her hunger had been in her eyes--and in her heart.

Loneliness--something that was almost physical: as if the vitality had been taken out of the air she breathed.