Horace rolled his eyes at her blatant lie. Since she was busy avoiding his eyes, she did not notice this little action of his and expected him to believe the words that she just spewed.
Horace once again sighed as he spoke, "Well okay then. I thought I would show you the book as you did not find it already. Since you want to look around, please continue doing so. I will leave then. I am busy anyway."
The woman shifted her eyes as she spoke slowly, "Well, now that you came here to show me the book, just show it to me. I will take the book and continue looking around."
Horace didn't know if he should laugh or cry at her actions and thus turned around and walked in the opposite direction from which she was walking earlier.
The woman panicked as she asked from behind, "Hey, I thought you are going to show me the book? Aren't you a librarian? Isn't that your duty? Why are you leaving halfway?"
Horace sighed again and turned his head to look at her as he spoke resignedly, ���I am showing you the book. Why are you not following me and instead talking about my duties here?"
The woman instantly felt guilty and she ran towards him and looked at him with a guilty smile. He just simply shook his head and started walking once again but this time he was followed closely by the woman.
He went and stood in front of a book shelf and pointed his finger towards a direction and spoke, "That is the book that you wanted. This row has all the books of the same author. If you are interested in his books, you can look around here too."
The woman timidly nodded her head as she didn't want to feel humiliated by this man once again. Being insulted once is already enough. But she is feeling humiliated by him again and again. It is better to stay silent than facing situations again.
She simply nodded and said, "Okay, thank you."
He too nodded in reply, "I am leaving now. If you need me for any other help I will be at my table where you saw me earlier. You can come directly over there."
She nodded her head and once Horace turned her head away from her to leave the place, the woman stuck her tongue out while looking at him like a fool making fun of him. She did not expect that he would turn his head back again and catch her expression on time before she got a chance to retract it.
He glanced at her face and did not comment anything about it but spoke, "Earlier you called me a good for nothing. I don't mind you calling me that because," He suddenly raised his hand making her scared.
She immediately raised her hand in defense and looked at him in wariness. Horace was dumbfounded by her reaction. She called him a good for nothing earlier and now she is being wary of him. What does she think he would do here?
He sighed and rolled the sleeve of his shirt to show his lean muscle. He then spoke, "Look at this. How could I help anyone with this body of mine? If I went and fought that man, you would have to come there anyway and fight him but instead of saving one girl, you would have saved one girl and one man."
He then covered his hand back using his sleeve and looked at her as she removed her hand from her previous defense position with an embarrassing smile.
He continued, "So what I want to say is that I don't mind you calling me a good for nothing as I accept that title readily. But still I would do the same even if it is repeated. I am not being scared. I am just being practical."
He then turned his head around and walked away without waiting for her reply. He doesn't care about her reaction. In fact he doesn't even have a need to give her an explanation about the previous incident. He clearly knows that he is not answerable to her in any way.
He too doesn't know why but he couldn't control himself as his mouth just spoke the words by itself. There is no specific reason for his action.
It is not the reaction of his brain but his heart. Every person sometimes does a few actions without any reason. Later they may wonder about why they had done that but they would never get an answer for that question.
This is one such situation for Horace too. As he was leaving, he too wondered why he even gave such an explanation to her. He always wanted to be a passerby in the lives of everyone. Hence he never once answered a single person in his life.
But today he spoke those words even when she did not ask anything about it. He himself was puzzled by his unexpected action.