She would not have known a wave if she had seen it.

"But I see waves," said the Lady of Shalott. She felt sure of it. They
ran up and down across the glass. They had green faces and gray hair.
They threw back their hands, like cool people resting, and it seemed
unaccountable, at the east end of South Street last summer, that
anything, anywhere, if only a wave in a looking-glass, could be cool or
at rest. Besides this, they kept their faces clean. Therefore the Lady
of Shalott took pleasure in watching them run up and down across the
glass. That a thing could be clean, and green, and white, was only less
a wonder than cool and rest last summer in South Street.

"Sary Jane, dear," said the Lady of Shalott, one day, "how hot _is_ it
up here?"

"Hot as Hell!" said Sary Jane.

"I thought it was a little warm," said the Lady of Shalott. "Sary Jane,
dear, isn't the yard down there a little--dirty?"

Sary Jane put down her needle, and looked out of the blazing, blindless
window. It had always been a subject of satisfaction to Sary Jane,
somewhere down below her lean shoulders and in the very teeth of the
rat-trap, that the Lady of Shalott could not see out of that window. So
she winked at the window, as if she would caution it to hold its burning
tongue, and said never a word.

"Sary Jane, dear," said the Lady of Shalott, once more, "had you ever
thought that perhaps I was a little--weaker--than I was--once?"