‘I will go if you like,’ she said.
‘I shall be obliged if you will. I have a certain reason for wishing it. It’s a rubbishy reason enough, and I needn’t bother you with it.’
She looked up at him, and it was clear to each when their eyes met, that the same species of thought was in the mind of both: both at any rate were thinking of what had occurred yesterday. But immediately she looked away again, silently pondering something, and he, watching her, saw that soft frown like a vertical pencil-mark appear between her eyebrows. Then it cleared again, and she looked at him with a smile that conveyed her comprehension of the ‘rubbishy reason,’ and a sudden flush that came over her face confirmed that to him. Naturally it was as awkward, even as impossible for her to speak of it, as it was for him; she could but consent to go or refuse to.
‘I expect I see your point,’ she said. ‘I will go.’
For the first time it occurred to him that she had a voice in the matter, that it was only fair to her to suggest that she should give up these visits to his house altogether. He would not be there when she went, but she understood now (indeed she had understood long ago, when she made her entry into the dinner-party) that Mrs Keeling had, so to speak, her eye on them. It was due to Norah that she should be allowed to say whether she wanted that eye taken off her.
‘Don’t go unless you wish,’ he said suddenly. ‘Give up the catalogue altogether if you like.’
The moment he suggested that, her whole nature, her consciousness of the entire innocence of her visits there, was up in arms against the proposal. Not to go there would imply that there was a reason for not going there, and there was none. Whatever had passed between Mrs Keeling and her husband yesterday was no business of hers; she intended to finish her work. This conclusion was comprised in the decision with which she answered him.
‘Why should I give up the catalogue?’ she said. ‘I have no intention of doing so unless you tell me to. My business is to finish it.’
Keeling hesitated: he wanted to say something to her which showed, however remotely, the gleam of his feelings, something which should let that spark of unspoken comprehension flash backwards and forwards again.