he had answered: "Because that girl, Miss
Lessways, thought of coming down to see it. For some reason or other
she's very keen on printing, and as she's such a friend of the
Orgreaves--"

Nobody, he considered, could have done that better than he had done it.

And now that girl, Miss Lessways, was nearly due. He stood behind the
counter again, waiting, waiting. He could not apply himself to
anything; he could scarcely wait. He was in a state that approached
fever, if not agony. To exist from half-past two to three o'clock
equalled in anguish the dreadful inquietude that comes before a surgical
operation.

He said to himself: "If I keep on like this I shall be in love with her
one of these days." He would not and could not believe that he already
was in love with her, though the possibility presented itself to him.
"No," he said, "you don't fall in love in a couple of days. You mustn't
tell me--" in a wise, superior, slightly scornful manner. "I dare say
there's nothing in it at all," he said uncertainly, after having
strongly denied throughout that there was anything in it.

The recollection of his original antipathy to Hilda troubled him. She
was the same girl. She was the same girl who had followed him at night
into his father's garden and merited his disdain. She was the same girl
who had been so unpleasant, so sharp, so rudely disconcerting in her
behaviour. And he dared not say that she had altered. And yet now he
could not get her out of his head. And although he would not admit that
he constantly admired her, he did admit that there were moments when he
admired her passionately and deemed her unique and above all women.
Whence the change in himself? How to justify it? The problem was
insoluble, for he was intellectually too honest to say lightly that
originally he had been mistaken.

He did not pretend to solve the problem. He looked at it with
perturbation, and left it. The consoling thing was that the Orgreaves
had always expressed high esteem for Hilda. He leaned on the Orgreaves.

He wondered how the affair would end? It could not indefinitely
continue on its present footing. How indeed would it end? Marriage...
He apologised to himself for the thought... But just for the sake of
argument ... supposing... well, supposing the affair went so far that
one day he told her ... men did such things, young men! No! ...
Besides, she wouldn't... It was absurd... No such idea really! ...