She shifted her position slightly, contriving to draw her skirt close about her long, slender limbs like a sheath.
But Dilling was not looking. He had taken a penknife from his pocket, and was giving First Aid to an untutored finger-nail.
“How shall I begin?” she went on, watching him from beneath her lashes. It was one of her prettiest gestures.
“Perhaps, if you made some notes and sent them to me—”
“Oh, please!” she protested. “That’s heartless of you. And do sit down! I can’t think while you wear that ‘Time’s up’ expression. It drives every idea from my head. I tell you frankly, Mr. Dilling, I expected you would be much more kind.”
She flung him a smile that had dazzled many another man. Dilling received it with indifference, in a wholly unprecedented manner. Mrs. Barrington found the experience somewhat disconcerting.
In his expression there was no appreciation of her loveliness. Neither was there the disapproval that betokens a recognition of it, or a sign of that wariness by which man betrays his knowledge of its danger. There was nothing.
In the abstract, Dilling saw men as trees, walking, but women he saw scarcely at all. Emotionally, he was vestigial. Artistically, he was numb. Beauty in any form registered only through his outward eye. He missed the inner vision that should have quickened his soul.
Mrs. Barrington was not an unfamiliar figure to him, although he had never been sufficiently interested to ask her name. Frequently, of late, he had seen her in the restaurant, or in the corridors, sometimes surrounded by a group of Parliamentary gallants, and sometimes in earnest tete-a-tete with just one man. If he thought of her at all, it was to conclude that like other women who haunt the House, she was engaged in the popular occupation known as lobbying, and he felt an instinctive opposition to whatever request she might be about to make.
On her part, Mrs. Barrington felt the disappointment of one who has been unexpectedly repulsed at the first line of attack, and sees the necessity for finer strategy. She laid aside the ineffectual weapon of physical charm, and took up the subtler blade of flattery.