She was busy at one of the bookcases with a note-book and pencil,
cataloguing on an absurd but independent plan of her own. He gave a
rueful glance at her.

"I'm not sure that I ought to have let you engage me last night. I
wonder if I might ask you--"

"To release you from your engagement?"

"You must think I'm behaving very badly."

She did not contradict him; neither did she assent. She held him for
the moment under her long penetrating gaze. Her eyes were not of the
detective sort, quick to penetrate disguises. They were (though she
did not know it) eyes that possessed the power of spiritual seduction,
luring souls to confession. Your falseness might escape them; but if
there was any truth in you, she compelled you to be true.

She compelled Rickman to be impulsive.

"I'd give anything to know what I ought to do."

She did not help him out.

"I can't make up my mind about this work."

"Is it the question of time? I thought we had made that clear? You
didn't undertake to finish by the twenty-seventh."