He was obliged to feel grateful. Yet something in him longed to refuse
the lemon, the something that never ceased from denouncing her. He
uttered the right banality:

"How good of you to bother about me!"

"But you bother about me, and on your only free day! Don't you think I
am grateful to you?"

There was no mockery in her voice. Today her irony was concealed, but,
like a carefully-covered fire, he knew it was burning still. And because
it was covered he resented it. He resented this comedy they were
playing, the insincerity into which she was smilingly leading him. She
could not imagine that she deceived him. She was far too clever for
that. Then what was the good of it all?--that she had put him, that she
kept him, at a disadvantage.

She handed him the muffins. She ministered to him as if she wanted to
pet him. Again he had to feel grateful. Even in acute dislike men must
be conscious of real charm in a woman. And Isaacson did not know how to
ignore anything that was beautiful. Had the Devil come to him--with a
grace, he must have thought, "How graceful is the Devil!" Now he was
charmed by her gesture. Nevertheless, being a man of will, and, in the
main, a man who was very sincere, he called up his hard resolutions, and
said:

"No, I don't think you are grateful. I don't think you are the woman to
be grateful without a cause."

"Or with one," he mentally added.