Miriam stared her double stupefaction. For a moment, as if to give her time to consider his suggestion, his smile remained, still deferential but with the determined boldness of a naughty child lurking behind it; then his eyes fell, too soon to catch her answering smile. She could not, with his determined unaverted and now nervously quivering face before her, either discourage the astounding suggestion or resent his complacent possession of information about her.
“I should tell you,” he apologised gently, “that Mrs. Bailey has say me you are working in the doctors’ quarter of London.”
“They are not doctors,” said Miriam, feeling stiffly English, and in her known post as dental secretary utterly outside his world of privileged studious adventure, “and you want a householder who is known to you and not a hotel or boardinghouse keeper.”
“That is very English. But no matter. Perhaps it shall be sufficient that I am graduate.”
“You could go down and see the librarian, you must write a statement.”
“That is an excellent idee.”
“I am a reader, but not a householder.”
“No matter. That is most excellent. You shall pairhaps introduce me to this gentleman. Ah, that is very good. I shall be most happy to find myself in that institution. It is one of my heartmost dreams of England to find myself in midst of all these leeter-aytchoors. … When can we go?”
There was a ring on the little finger of the hand that drew from an inner pocket a limp leather pocketbook; pale old gold curving up to a small pimple of jewels. The ringed hand moving above the dip of the double watch-chain gave to his youth a strange look of mellow wealthy middle age.