She sat facing the light, and he saw the slight quiver of her features. "I expect I shall." She had no inner doubts. She found in him something good and rare, something the more valuable because of its aloofness and its difference from herself, and if she could not yet see him as a whole, she was drawn to the parts made visible.
She broke the moment's strain by pushing aside her papers and setting her elbows on the table. She took her face in her hands.
"Let's talk," she said. And then, "Do you ever laugh?"
He smiled instead. "Not often."
"I should like to see you helpless with laughter, doing all sorts of undignified things—crying and uncontrolled. Do you think you could?"
"I'm sure I couldn't. You'll set that down against me?"
"I'm not making a list of your qualities," she said sharply. "But you're honest."
"Had you doubted it?"
"I don't think we'll talk, after all," she said. He pleased her with the steady look that ended in a smile, and she went home that night in a state of happy restlessness.
She felt herself being involved in a liking for him which resulted from his liking for her, but was none the less sincere, and characteristically she chafed while she rejoiced. Love, she found, has more than one means of entry, and though she had always pictured herself seized roughly by the intruder, life was teaching her to mistrust imagination, and she resigned herself easily to this daintier form of worship, for there was a novel pleasure in being enthroned, spreading herself for homage and startling the worshipper with sudden incongruities.