Chapter 20

The bridge had an inexhaustible fascination for him. It commanded only a few yards away, the rear of a wide block of tenement houses with rank above rank of windows—kitchen windows. In warm weather all these windows were flung up, and particularly at dusk when the lamps were first lighted, anybody crossing the bridge might share in vicarious intimacy with a hundred households. Within those windows people laughed and cursed, and whistled and cried; they ate and fought, and kissed and yawned, and scratched themselves…