She met his eyes with complete frankness: there was nothing to show whether she had caught the suggestion that lurked in his speech or not.
‘Then shall I go down to your house now, and get on with my business?’ she said.
He was half disappointed, half pleased. But, wisely, he gave up the idea of conveying to her that there was anything more than ‘business’ for him in her working among his books. If she understood that her handling them, her passing hours in his room, her preparing his catalogue was something so utterly different from what it would have been if any one else was doing it for him, she would have found the hint of that in what he had said. If she did not—well, it was exactly there that the disappointment came in. He pulled his chair a little nearer to the table again, where his work lay.
‘There is one other thing,’ he said. ‘You get four days’ holiday at Christmas, you and your brother. Are you going to spend them here?’
‘I suppose so.’
‘Then take my advice and make your brother go to the seaside with you instead. You’ve been rather overworked lately and he has too. A change would do you both good.’
‘Oh, I don’t think we shall go away,’ she said.
He fidgeted with his papers a moment. When money concerned business, he could discuss and bargain with the nonchalance of a man who had passed his life in making it. But when money began to trespass on the privacies of life, there was no one in the world more shy of mentioning it.
‘Miss Propert,’ he said, ‘don’t think me impertinent, but if there’s any question of expense about your going away, please let me advance you the money I shall be paying you for my catalogue. You’ve done a good deal of work on it already: it is quite a reasonable proposal.’
The moment he said that Norah knew that she did not want to be paid at all for her work on the catalogue. When she undertook to do it, he had just mentioned the question of payment, saying that she would let him know her charges some time, but since then the thought of what she was going to charge had not entered her head. And now, when she thought of those pleasant hours in his library, she disliked the thought of payment.