"I'm afraid of making any promises I mightn't be able to keep." Man's vacillation is Fate's determination, and Miss Harden was as firm as Fate. He felt that the fine long hands playing with the catalogue were shaping events for him, while her eyes measured him with their meditative gaze. "I must risk that," she said. "I should lose more than three days in finding a substitute, and I think you will do the work as I want it done." "And supposing I can't do it in time?" "Will you do your best--that's all?" "Certainly; whatever I do, I shall do my best. And if I fail you--" Left unfinished, hanging in mid air, the phrase suggested the vague phantasmal contingencies for which he could find no name. "I am willing to take the risk." Her phrase too was satisfying. Its generous amplitude covered him like a cloak. "But we haven't arranged anything about terms." No, they had not. Was it in her adorable simplicity, or in the mere recklessness of her youth, that she engaged him first and talked about terms afterwards? Or did she know an honest man when she saw one? He took his note-book and pencil and made out an estimate with the rapidity of happy inspiration, a fantastic estimate, incredibly and ludicrously small. "Then," said she, "there will be your expenses." He had not thought of that difficulty; but he soared above it, still reckless and inspired. "Expenses? Oh, expenses are included." She considered the estimate with the prettiest pucker of her meditative brows. "I don't understand these things; but--it seems very little." "Our usual charge." So swiftly did the wings of his inspiration carry him into the blue ideal, high above both verbal verity and the gross material fact. She acquiesced, though with some reluctance. "Well, and when do you think you can begin?" "Whenever it's most convenient to you. I shall have to take a look round first." "You can do that at once." By this time he had forgotten that whatever he might have drunk he had eaten nothing since the dinner of last night. He had ceased to feel faint and headachy and hungry, having reached that stage of faintness, headache and hunger when the body sheds its weight and seems to walk gloriously upon air, to be possessed of supernatural energy. He went up and down library steps that were ladders, and stood perilously on the tops of them. He walked round and round the walls, making calculations, till the library began to swing slowly round too, and a thin circle of grey mist swung with it. And all the time he was obscurely aware of a delicate grey-clad figure going to and fro in the grey mist, or seated intent at the table, doing his work. He felt that her eyes followed him now and then.