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‘Dismissed!’

Anna’s look flashed a grateful response to him. By the least possible emphasis he had expressed a complete disagreement with his senior colleague which etiquette forbade him to utter in words.

‘I think it’s a very great pity,’ Anna said firmly. ‘I rather like the girl,’ she ventured in haste; ‘you might speak to Mr. Price about it.’

‘If he mentions it to me.’

‘Yes, I meant that. Mr. Price said—if it had been anything else but a Bible—’

‘Um!’ he murmured very low, but she caught the significance of his intonation. They did not glance at each other: it was unnecessary. Anna felt that comfortable easement of the spirit which springs from the recognition of another spirit capable of understanding without explanations and of sympathising without a phrase. Under that calm mask a strange and sweet satisfaction thrilled through her as her precious instinct of common sense—rarest of good qualities, and pining always for fellowship— found a companion in his own. She had dreaded the overtures which for a fortnight past she had foreseen were inevitably to come from Mynors: he was a stranger, whom she merely respected. Now in a sudden disclosure she knew him and liked him. The dire apprehension of those formal ‘advances’ which she had watched other men make to other women faded away. It was at once a release and a reassurance.