Three weeks passed. Prothero had been four times to see Miss Gunning. He
had been once because she said he might come again; once because of a
book he had promised to lend her; once because he happened to be
passing; and once for no reason whatsoever. It was then borne in on him
that what he required was a pretext. Calling late one evening he caught
Miss Gunning in the incredible double act of flinging off a paragraph
for the papers while she talked to Mr. Gunning.
His pretext, heaven-sent, unmistakable, stared him in the face. He could
not write paragraphs for the papers (they wouldn't take his paragraphs),
but he could talk to Mr. Gunning. It was not so difficult as he would
have at first supposed. He had already learnt the trick of it. You took
a chair. You made a statement. Any statement would do. You had only to
say to Mr. Gunning, "Isn't that so?" and he would bow and assure you,
with a solemn courtesy, that it was, and sit up waiting patiently for
you to do it again; and you went on talking to Miss Gunning until he
showed signs of restlessness. When you had done this several times
running he would sink back in his chair appeased. But Prothero had
discovered that if you concentrated your attention on Mr. Gunning, if
you exposed him to a steady stream of statements, he invariably went to
sleep; and while he slept Laura wrote.
And while Laura wrote, Owen could keep on looking at her as much as he
liked.
From where he sat his half-closed eyes could take in rather more than a
side view of Laura. He could see her head as it bent and turned over her
work, showing, now the two low waves of its dark hair, now the flat
coils at the back that took the beautiful curve of Laura's head. From
time to time she would look up at him and smile, and he would smile
back again under his eyelids with a faint quiver of his moustache.