END OF BOOK FOUR
BOOK FIVE MIDDLE AGE (1900-1910)
XXXI
I.
She must have been sitting there twenty minutes.
She was afraid to look up at the clock, afraid to move an eyelid lest she should disturb him.
The library had the same nice, leathery, tobaccoey smell. Rough under her fingers the same little sharp tongue of leather scratched up from the arm of her chair. The hanging, half-open fans of the ash-tree would be making the same Japanese pattern in the top left hand pane of the third window. She wanted to see it again to make sure of the pattern, but she was afraid to look up.
If she looked up she would see him.
She mustn't. It would disturb him horribly. He couldn't write if he thought you were looking at him.
It was wonderful that he could go on like that, with somebody in the room, that he let you sit in it when he was writing. The big man.