But in here it seemed that neither morning nor weather really existed. This place was timeless. He spoke in an occupied voice, like an echo. Ursula did not know what to say. She took off her waterproof.
“Am I early?” she asked.
The man looked first at a little clock, then at her. His eyes seemed to be sharpened to needle-points of vision.
“Twenty-five past,” he said. “You’re the second to come. I’m first this morning.”
Ursula sat down gingerly on the edge of a chair, and watched his thin red hands rubbing away on the white surface of the paper, then pausing, pulling up a corner of the sheet, peering, and rubbing away again. There was a great heap of curled white-and-scribbled sheets on the table.
“Must you do so many?” asked Ursula.
Again the man glanced up sharply. He was about thirty or thirty-three years old, thin, greenish, with a long nose and a sharp face. His eyes were blue, and sharp as points of steel, rather beautiful, the girl thought.
“Sixty-three,” he answered.
“So many!” she said, gently. Then she remembered.
“But they’re not all for your class, are they?” she added.