Yet there was something familiar about her too—the black gypsyish eyes, the fleshy mouth, the restless manner. The way her gaze sifted through the crowd, idle, predatory, seemingly aimless. Monica wondered for a brief excited moment whether they might have met before. It would probably have been in New York City if anywhere. Though she and her husband had had surprisingly few friends in the two years they had lived in the city they seemed to have been acquainted with a great many persons, a variegated promiscuous number, strangers with “familiar” faces, friendly enough at parties, in fact wonderfully friendly at parties, though otherwise anonymous. . . . The black-haired woman struck Monica as quintessentially New York despite her horsey posture: but when her prowling gaze touched upon Monica there was no sign of recognition or interest.

“That woman over there, the one with the amazing eyebrows,” one of Monica’s male colleagues said in a low voice, “—the one who looks as if she’s wandered in and is about to wander out again—that’s Sheila Trask the painter: does she look anything like her photographs?”

“I’ve never seen a photograph of her,” Monica said.

A few minutes later Mrs. Greene led Monica over to the woman, and introduced them in a hearty voice, as if “Miss Trask” might actually be interested in “Miss Jensen,” one of the promising new instructors on the Glenkill faculty. She clearly offended Sheila Trask by suggesting that the two women were practically neighbors: Monica had just moved into a farmhouse on the Olcottsville Road, and Sheila lived at Edgemont, on the Poor Farm Road, approximately two miles to the north. “I’m afraid I really don’t have any neighbors, Edgemont is so isolated,” Sheila Trask murmured. Her voice was both apologetic and incensed. But she shook hands readily with Monica in her stilted mock-formal way.

Her fingers were thin, cold, surprisingly strong. She wore no rings and her nails had been bluntly filed; even so they were ridged lightly with dirt or paint. She gave off a mingled scent—tobacco, turpentine, wool in need of dry cleaning, the faint sweet odor of the wilted camellia. Close up, Monica saw that she was even thinner than she had appeared at a distance, but wiry, sinewy. She was probably in her early forties. Her skin looked exotic, soiled—it had a queer olivish tint that suggested malnourishment. Her black, moist, slightly protuberant eyes were her most beautiful feature: thickly lashed, deep-set and shadowed, and suspicious. And the unplucked black brows nearly met in a querulous inverted V on the bridge of her nose.