...But then she insisted, 'Tell me, do you ever think of this one moment? Now. This is me now. This is happening to me.' 'Not any more.' 'Oh, you make yourself out so old? But Charlotte could remember just that, standing at the centre of the universe on the very apex of time. Now it seemed that she stood a little to the side of centre and that her awareness was not confined to any particular moment. Lights were going on in the town, giving it depth, a suggestion of back streets and lives suddenly illuminated in the moment before the curtains are drawn. Once tiny filaments would have connected her to all those windows, to all those lives. But now she knew those streets to be composed of a dense element, nonconductive of spirit, which she would penetrate and emerge from gratefully without influencing or being influenced. But Ellie must still believe that the town reacted and attracted, wanted to take from her and to give.p. 10

On the half-empty deck Charlotte and her brother again encountered the English family and this time entered irrevocably on the perils of acquaintanceship.p. 77

It was then that he turned and directed a question towards Charlotte. He held no terror for her now. She could even see that he was not entirely a gentlemanly person. How does one know other than by a sensibility to the minutest details of dress and speech imbued by years of caution in such matters. Yet she liked the frankness with which he addressed her, as if the little effort to draw her into the conversation should be taken as a matter of course. He asked her if she looked forward to visiting the cathedral at Cologne.p. 80