‘I don’t want to be paid at all,’ she said. ‘It was most of it work done in office hours, when otherwise I should have been in the office here. I have done a certain amount in the evening, but I enjoyed it: I found it much more amusing than playing Patience.’
‘No, I can’t allow that for a moment,’ he said.
‘What if you have to?’ she asked, smiling.
‘I shall not have the catalogue completed. And I shall insist on paying for what you have done. I shall get an estimate of your work made and a price fixed.’
He did not smile back at her: he looked at the table and drummed it with his fingers, as she had often seen him do when he was discussing some business point on which he did not intend to yield.
‘Are you serious?’ she asked.
‘I was never more so.’
‘But I have really enjoyed doing it. I—I have done it for the sake of books. I like doing things for books.’
Keeling stopped his drumming fingers, and looked up with his grim face relaxing.
‘Don’t remind me of that affair over my book-plate,’ he said. ‘You are putting me into an odious position. It isn’t generous of you.’