I stammered a little, then sat down and scrambled about in my bag for a small fan I always carried.
"A minute?"
"Not long, really—for it's getting late, you see!"
My fingers were twitching nervously with the fan, trying to stuff it back into the bag and hide that miserable copy paper which had sprung out of its lair like a "jack-in-the-box" at the opening of the clasp.
He smiled—so silently and persistently that I was constrained to look up and catch it. He had seemed not to observe the copy paper.
"If you're in such a hurry your 'business' must be urgent," he said, and his tone was full of satire.
"It is, but—"
I looked at him again, then hesitated, my voice breaking suddenly. Somehow, I felt that I was a thousand miles away from that magic spot on the Nile where the evening before had placed me. He looked so different!
"You needn't rub it in on me!" I flashed back at him.
His chair was tilted slightly against the desk, and he sat there observing me impersonally as if I were a wasp pinned on a cardboard. He was looking aloof and keenly aristocratic—as he was at the entrance of the conservatory the evening before.