The following text is adapted from Henry James’s 1916 short story “The Pupil.” A man is being considered for a position as a live-in tutor for a woman’s child.
The poor young man hesitated and procrastinated: it cost him such an effort to broach the subject of terms, to speak of money to a person who spoke only of feelings and, as it were, of the aristocracy. Yet he was unwilling to take leave, treating his engagement as settled, without some more conventional glance in that direction than he could find an opening for in the manner of the large affable lady who sat there drawing a pair of soiled suede gloves through a jewelled hand and, at once pressing and gliding, repeated over and over everything but the thing he would have liked to hear.
The poor young man hesitated and procrastinated: it cost him such an effort to broach the subject of terms, to speak of money to a person who spoke only of feelings and, as it were, of the aristocracy. Yet he was unwilling to take leave, treating his engagement as settled, without some more conventional glance in that direction than he could find an opening for in the manner of the large affable lady who sat there drawing a pair of soiled suede gloves through a jewelled hand and, at once pressing and gliding, repeated over and over everything but the thing he would have liked to hear.