"May I look?" she said.
The sensation was in his chest—he felt as if his chest had gone. She stood there, amused by his symptoms, for two or three minutes, and moved away. He was incredibly excited, boundlessly happy until he began to think of the better answers he might have made. Visions of the evening and the morrow dazzled him; when he went inside it was not the same hotel to him, they were not the same rooms. It does not take a woman six days to create a world for any man.
By the end of the week he talked to her often and freely. At the end of a fortnight:
"I used to be afraid you'd never say anything at all to me," he owned.
"I thought you weren't very nice," she said.
"Miss McGuire told you things about me?"
"She told me as soon as you apologised to her, too. I was pleased you did that, even if you weren't in the wrong."
"Wouldn't you ever have taken any notice of me if I hadn't?"
"I did notice you," she smiled.
"Did you? But 'ever spoken to me,' I mean?"