en. What struck him most was the intense quiet of her presence; it
was this that made his own so noisy and obtrusive.

And yet, she didn't, she really didn't appear to notice it. She might
have been unaware that there was any such person as Mr. Savage Keith
Rickman in the room. He wondered how on earth she achieved that serene
unconsciousness; he came to the conclusion that it was not her own
achievement at all, but the achievement of her race. Theirs too that
something subtly imperious in her bearing, which seemed not so much
the attitude of her mind as the way her head was set on her shoulders.
He could not say that she betrayed any sense of his social
inferiority, unless it were in a certain courtesy which he gathered to
be rather more finished than any she would have shown to a man of her
own class.

It was not only finished, it was final. The thing was so perfect in
itself that obviously it could lead no further. She would say in her
exquisite voice, "Would you mind taking these five volumes back to
your shelf?" or, "I'm sorry to interrupt you, but can you tell me
whether this is the original binding?" Under no circumstances could he
imagine himself replying, "I wouldn't mind taking fifty volumes," or
"I like being interrupted." All this was a complete inversion of the
rules that Keith Rickman was acquainted with as governing polite
intercourse between the sexes, and he found it extremely
disconcerting. It was as if some fine but untransparent veil had been
hung between him and her, dividing them more effectually than a
barricade.

The wonder, which grew with the morning, was not so much in the things
she said as in the things she didn't say. Her powers of reservation
seemed to Rickman little short of miraculous. Until yesterday he had
never met a woman who did not, by some look or tone or movement of her
body, reveal what she was thinking about him. Whatever Miss Harden
thought about him she kept it to herself. Unfortunately the same high
degree of reticence was expected from him, and to Keith Rickman, when
not restrained by excess of shyness, reticence came hard. It was apt
to break down when a severe strain was put on it, as had been the case
that morning. And it was appointed that the same thing should happen
to him this afternoon.

As far as he could remember it happened in this way. He was busy
getting the Greek dramatists into their places, an enterprise which
frequently took him to her end of the room