Katherine continued to work.
"I am merely waiting until you have finished directing those confounded parcels, which I presume are for this post—and then I am going to coax you to talk to me—May I smoke?"
"Yes, if you like—" still with lowered head.
"Won't you have a cigarette?"
"Thanks."
He handed her one from his case. She pulled a box of matches near and lit it casually, going on with her work as a boy might have done—There was no knocking off of ash or graceful movement of the hand in the fashion of Läo, who loved her white jewelled fingers to be seen to advantage.
Neither of them spoke. He might not have been in the room as far as she was concerned! He, on the contrary, was profoundly aware of her presence. Emotion such as he had not felt for years was surging through him.
She was the most damnably attractive creature, he thought, he had ever met. She awoke primitive passions, and stirred his blood. There was that intense note of reality and strength about her. She was like some dangerous lazy lioness. She made him feel that civilisation was slipping from him, and that he could willingly seize her for a jungle mate.
She, however, continued to smoke and to write for quite ten minutes, until all the parcels were addressed, and several papers examined and annotated and filed. Then she looked up. His eyes had never left her face.