If she looked up she would see him.
She knew what she would see: the fine, cross upper lip lifted backwards by the moustache, the small grizzled brown moustache, turned up, that made it look crosser. The narrow, pensive lower lip, thrust out by its light jaw. His nose—quite a young nose—that wouldn't be Roman, wouldn't be Sutcliffe; it looked out over your head, tilted itself up to sniff the world, obstinate, alert. His eyes, young too, bright and dark, sheltered, safe from age under the low straight eyebrows. They would never have shabby, wrinkled sagging lids. Dark brown hair, grey above his ears, clipped close to stop its curling like his uncle's. He liked to go clipped and clean. You felt that he liked his own tall, straight slenderness.
The big library rustled with the quick, irritable sound of his writing.
It stopped. He had finished. He looked at the clock. She heard a small, commiserating sound.
"Forgive me. I really thought it would only take five minutes. How on earth do you manage to keep so quiet? I should have known if a mouse had moved."
He turned towards her. He leaned back in his chair. "You don't mind my smoking?"
He was settling himself. Now she would know.
"Well," he said, "if I did keep you waiting forty minutes, it was a good test, wasn't it?"
He meditated.
"I'm always changing my secretaries because of something. The last one was admirable, but I couldn't have stood her in the room when I was writing…. Besides, you work better."