“What would you prefer to do?” he asked.
She laughed at him indulgently, as she said:
“There is so little likelihood of my ever being given a choice, that I haven’t wasted time considering.”
“Pah!” he said, contemptuous on his side now. “You only say that because you’re too proud to own up what you want and can’t get.”
“You know me very well,” she replied coldly.
“I know you think you’re terrific great shakes, and that you live under the eternal insult of working in a factory.”
He was very angry and very rude. She merely turned away from him in disdain. He walked whistling down the room, flirted and laughed with Hilda.
Later on he said to himself:
“What was I so impudent to Clara for?” He was rather annoyed with himself, at the same time glad. “Serve her right; she stinks with silent pride,” he said to himself angrily.
In the afternoon he came down. There was a certain weight on his heart which he wanted to remove. He thought to do it by offering her chocolates.
“Have one?” he said. “I bought a handful to sweeten me up.”
To his great relief, she accepted. He sat on the work-bench beside her machine, twisting a piece of silk round his finger. She loved him for his quick, unexpected movements, like a young animal. His feet swung as he pondered. The sweets lay strewn on the bench. She bent over her machine, grinding rhythmically, then stooping to see the stocking that hung beneath, pulled down by the weight. He watched the handsome crouching of her back, and the apron-strings curling on the floor.
“There is always about you,” he said, “a sort of waiting. Whatever I see you doing, you’re not really there: you are waiting—like Penelope when she did her weaving.” He could not help a spurt of wickedness. “I’ll call you Penelope,” he said.
“Would it make any difference?” she said, carefully removing one of her needles.
“That doesn’t matter, so long as it pleases me. Here, I say, you seem to forget I’m your boss. It just occurs to me.”
“And what does that mean?” she asked coolly.
“It means I’ve got a right to boss you.”
“Is there anything you want to complain about?”
“Oh, I say, you needn’t be nasty,” he said angrily.
