What he’d been prepared to urge was that now that his connection with the enterprise had terminated, now that he was no longer a director and the representative of her employers, she should take him on trust simply as a friend.  He was prepared to answer protests, to offer compromises—­concessions to appearances.  He’d expected her to exhibit some shyness of the taxi.  According to his unconscious ideal of the situation she should have looked questioningly at him—­hesitated, and then let him assure her that it was all right.  She should have gasped a little when the car turned south in the dark little court below Van Buren Street, have shrunk a little at the isolation the emptiness of the restaurant enforced upon them, and declined, with something not far short of panic, her share of that bottle of Burgundy.  Because all these flutters and questionings would just have opened the way for his assurances—­perfectly honest assurances, too, as far as he knew—­of the candor of his feelings and intentions toward her.

She needed a friend, that was plain enough, some one who had her best interests honestly at heart; some one who knew the pitfalls and the difficulties of this pilgrimage she’d so strangely set out on, and could advise her how to avoid them.  That he was, potentially, that friend, he truly believed.  And what better way could there be of convincing her of it than by persuading her to trust him, and then proving that her trust had not been misplaced?

But what was one to do—­how was one to make a beginning when she trusted him without any persuasion?  Trusted him as a matter of course, without the glimmer of any sort of emotion whatever; about as if he’d been—­well, say, her brother-in-law!

He was at a loss for a peg to hang his definite sense of injury upon.  He couldn’t blame the girl for having trusted him, nor for proving so perfectly adequate to the unconventional situation he’d created.  He couldn’t reproach her, even in his thoughts, for the frankly expressed pleasure she took in the leisured dignity of the little restaurant, with its modestly sumptuous appointments (she even let him see that she appreciated the fineness of the napery and the handsomeness of the tableware; admitted, indeed, how sharply it contrasted with what she’d been used to lately), nor for the real appreciation she showed of the supper he selected.

But the moment he had been planning, counting on for days—­weeks, if it came to that—­with an excitement he couldn’t deny, a tensity that had increased as the prospect of it drew nearer, was not exciting nor tense for her.  If anything, she’d relaxed a little, as if the big moment of her day had passed—­or, postponed by this affair of his, were still to come.  Once or twice when her gaze detached itself from him and rested unfocused on the other side of the room, he saw little changes of expression go over her face that didn’t relate to him at all.  He simply wasn’t in focus, that was the size of it.  He had never seen her look lovelier, more completely desirable than she did right now, dressed as she was in her very simple street clothes and relaxed by the surrounding quiet and comfort and her own fatigue.  And yet, all alone with him as she had so confidingly permitted herself to be, and near enough to reach with the bare stretching out of a hand, she’d never been further away nor seemed more unattainable.