She had asked him whether she hadn't better go away and come back again, and he had said No, he didn't want her to go away. He wouldn't keep her waiting more than five minutes.
It was unbelievable that she should be sitting there, in that room, as if nothing had happened; as if they were there; as if they might come in any minute; as if they had never gone. A week ago she would have said it was impossible, she couldn't do it, for anybody, no matter how big or how celebrated he was.
Why, after ten years—it must be ten years—she couldn't even bear to go past the house while other people were in it. She hated them, the people who took Greffington Hall for the summer holidays and the autumn shooting. She would go round to Renton by Jackson's yard and the fields so as not to see it. But when the brutes were gone and the yellow blinds were down in the long rows of windows that you saw above the grey garden wall, she liked to pass it and look up and pretend that the house was only waiting for them, only sleeping its usual winter sleep, resting till they came back.
It was ten years since they had gone.
No. If Richard Nicholson hadn't been Mr. Sutcliffe's nephew, she couldn't, no matter how big and how celebrated he was, or how badly he wanted her help or she wanted his money.
No matter how wonderful and important it would feel to be Richard
Nicholson's secretary.
It wasn't really his money that she wanted. It would be worth while doing it for nothing, for the sake of knowing him. She had read his Euripides.
She wondered: Supposing he kept her, how long would it last? He was in the middle of his First Series of Studies in Greek Literature; and there would be two, or even three if he went on.
He had taken Greffington Hall for four months. When he went back to London he would have to have somebody else.
Perhaps he would tell her that, after thinking it over, he had found he didn't want her. Then to-day would be the end of it.