. She couldn't have been, then, a day
older than one-and-twenty. My first instinct (at least, I suppose it was
my first) was to send her away; to tell her that I was afraid she
wouldn't do, that she was too unpunctual, and that I had found, between
nine-thirty and ten o'clock, somebody who would suit me rather better.
Any lie I could think of, so long as I got out of it. So long as I got
her out of it.

I don't know how it was she so contrived to impress me as being in for
something, some impetuous adventure, some enterprise of enormous
uncertainty. It may have been because she looked so well-cared-for and
expensive. I do not understand these matters, but her furs, and her
tailor-made suit of dark cloth, and the little black velvet hat with the
fur tail in it were not the sort of clothes I had hitherto seen worn by
typists seeking for employment. So that I doubted whether financial
necessity could have driven her to my door. Or else I had a premonition.
She herself had none. She was guileless and unaware of taking any risks.
And that, I think, was what disturbed me. The situation bristled because
she so ignored all difficulty or danger.

Please don't imagine that I regarded myself as dangerous or even
difficult, or her as being, in any vulgar sense, out for adventure, or as
balancing herself even for amusement on any perilous edge. It was not
what she was _out_ for, it was, as I say, what she might possibly be in
for; and what she would, in consequence, let me in for too. She made me
feel responsible.

"Let me see," I said; "it's typing, isn't it?"

I began raking through drawers and pigeon-holes, pretending to find her
letter and the sample of her work that she had sent me, though I knew all
the time that they lay under my hand hidden by the blotter. I wanted to
give myself time; I wanted to create the impression that I was old at
this game; that I had to do with scores and scores of young women seeking
employment; to make her realize the grim fact of competition; to saturate
her with the idea that she was only one of scores and scores, all
docketed and pigeon-holed, any one of whom might have superior qualities;
when it would be easy enough to say, "I'm sorry, but the fact is, I
rather think I've engaged somebody already."

"Yes," she said, "it's typing. I can't do anything else. But if you want
shorthand, I could learn it."

This gave me an opening. "Well--I'm sorry--but the fact is--"

"Did you like what I s