Explore "The Expensive Halo" by Josephine Tey on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Gareth went home by bus, although it took much longer than the Underground, because he felt that he wanted the lights and the traffic as an obbligato to the things which were singing in his head. He had a vague feeling that if he had to endure the sepulchral atmosphere and mummified figures of the Underground to-night he would burst. All the way home the exultation in him span itself into music; mad, lovely music, as triumphant as the buses which charged past within a foot of his nose, as dancing as the lights, as full of power and radiance as the tall buildings, flood-lit against the sky. So that it was not until he stepped off the bus at the corner of Sark Street that he remembered Molly.
Ursula had never forgotten her for one moment; from the time that Gareth's little careless sentence had hit her with the force of a bullet, Molly had never ceased to be somewhere in her mind. But Gareth had been so carried away that the world he knew had ceased to exist for him; he had almost forgotten his own identity. Now he remembered it with a shock. He was Gareth Ellis, and he had been unfaithful to Molly. Not unfaithful in the modern sense, but unfaithful nevertheless.