“Oh, it doesn’t matter! Never mind about my books,” she said hurriedly.
Adela could not imagine Willoughby reading anybody’s books, unless definitely of that class which deals with a fictitious Secret Service or the intrigues of an imaginary kingdom.
Her own books were small masterpieces of psychology, subtly ironical. A shudder, half-humorous, half-despairing, came over her at the idea of Hal Willoughby, bored and mystified, ploughing his way through one of her books.
“Never mind about my books,” she repeated. “I’d rather you thought of me as a girl than as a writer.”
She felt wildly daring in so speaking, partly because she had called herself a girl, although she was thirty, and partly because it was the first time that she had ever attempted what she supposed to be a flirtation.
Her reputation for cleverness had always been so great and so terrible that young men had never dared to approach her.
She supposed that must be the reason for their aloofness, since she had always been passably pretty; and even now, by artificial light, she looked five years younger than she was.
Her hair and her colouring were charming in a subdued and unvivid way, her features straight and very clean-cut. She hardly realised how much too thin were the lips of her tiny mouth, how intense and over-prominent her large hazel eyes.
“I never can imagine how anybody can write a book,” said Willoughby.
Adela moved uneasily. She could tell what was coming.