"Oh, Pam!" he said. "Then you can marry him and be happy! I wish I could do something just to show my enormous gratitude to you."
"Do you really mean that?" I said. I swung round on the music-stool, on which I had seated myself, and smiled up at him.
"Of course I do."
"Then give me five hundred pounds," I said.
Cheneston lit a cigarette.
I do think the girl who has been brought up among a pack of brothers and a crowd of male cousins misses something. When you start knowing men for the first time in your twenties—when your critical faculties are at their very keenest—you do get a fearful amount of astonishment and thrills out of the appalling difference there is between their ways and the ways of your own sex. It's a never-ceasing source of wonder to you.
I had startled Cheneston by a totally unexpected demand for five hundred pounds—and he lit a cigarette.
A woman would have played with something, probably the blind-tassel—Cheneston was standing near the window—repeated my question, and tried to read my face; the man did none of these things. I think cigarettes are to men what dangly things about dresses, and bracelets, and hairpins are to women—something they can play with and readjust when something has robbed them of their poise and sang-froid. I notice that nervy women and shy women often have scarves and bead necklaces and things they can finger in stressful moments.
"Would you like it in notes, or will a cheque do?" Cheneston asked quietly. "If you will take a cheque I will give it to you now; if you want notes I am afraid you must wait until I can drive in to the bank."
"I want it in notes," I said.