Being in all things so much quicker and brisker than Olive, she got downstairs first in the morning. When she entered the dining room, Robertson spoke again, and smiled. He pulled out her chair for her, and paid her various polite little attentions not at all remarkable in themselves, but new to Miss Torrance. She couldn’t actually be rude to the man, for he hadn’t offended in any way, and he wasn’t really obtrusive; but—
Morning and evening, for an endless week, she was obliged to see him, and to make civil responses to his civil greetings. By the end of the week she knew why she didn’t like Mr. Robertson. She didn’t like him because she couldn’t manage him. She couldn’t overawe him. She couldn’t impress him. When she was with him, she couldn’t really be Miss Torrance at all.
This, of course, she couldn’t endure. She wasn’t much used to talking to men, and she had a pretty poor opinion of them in general. She thought they ought to be ashamed of themselves, and Mr. Robertson evidently was not at all ashamed of himself. He was a surveyor of hulls, and she couldn’t help admitting that he had advanced further in business knowledge than herself. He had lived in all sorts of outlandish places—in Surabaya, in Hongkong, in Cape Town. He knew the world, and seemed to take it for granted that she didn’t. Apparently he regarded her as a dear, helpless little creature, and the incredible thing was that, while with him, Miss Torrance couldn’t help feeling like that.
One morning, when they were alone in the dining room, talking together in what certainly looked like a friendly manner, she looked up at him and asked him a question, with exactly the look and the voice of a dear, helpless little creature. Mr. Robertson looked back at her. Their eyes met. This made Miss Torrance very angry.
“I’m down town almost every day,” said Mr. Robertson. “Can’t we arrange to have lunch together some day?”
“Thank you,” said Miss Torrance, “but I have no time.”
She said it in a way that Mr. Robertson could not very well help understanding. And the whole morning long she remembered this—remembered how the smile had vanished from his face, how stiffly he had bowed.
“I hope I did discourage him!” she told herself vehemently. “He’s the friend of that troublesome Mr. Martin, and he’s trying to scrape up an acquaintance with me, so that he can give messages and so on to Olive. Well, he shan’t!”
IV
It was really spring now, a wild, gay April day, and Miss Torrance felt unusually restless. She was wearing a new suit, dark blue, very plain, very smart, and what with that and the spring in the air, she felt inclined to festivity. She thought it would be nice if she was going to meet somebody for lunch. Well, of course she wasn’t, but instead of going to the tea room where she had been going for years, she went to a near-by hotel.