“Yes,” she admitted, “I was a different sort of woman.”
“You don’t remember those days, I suppose,” he went on, “the days when you had brown hair, when you used to carry roses about and sing to yourself while you beat your work out of that wretched typewriter?”
“No,” she answered, “I do not remember those days. They do not belong to me. It is some other woman you are thinking of.”
Their eyes met. Mr. Fentolin turned away first. He struck the bell at his elbow. She rose at once.
“Be off!” he ordered. “When you look at me like that, you send shivers through me! You’ll have to go; I can see you’ll have to go. I can’t keep you any longer. You are the only person on the face of the earth who dares to say things to me which make me think, the only person who doesn’t shrink at the sound of my voice. You’ll have to go. Send Sarson to me at once. You’ve upset me!”
She listened to his words in expressionless silence. When he had finished, carrying her book in her hand, she very quietly moved towards the door. He watched her, leaning a little forward in his chair, his lips parted, his eyes threatening. She walked with steady, even footsteps. She carried herself with almost machine-like erectness; her skirts were noiseless. She had the trick of turning the handle of the door in perfect silence. He heard her calm voice in the hall.
“Doctor Sarson is to go to Mr. Fentolin.”
Mr. Fentolin sat quite still, feeling his own pulse.
“That woman,” he muttered to himself, “that—woman—some day I shouldn’t be surprised if she really—”
He paused. The doctor had entered the room.