They were about to find out.

But I want to be precise about what changed in Clara at Karl’s whispered sneer, because it was a specific and important shift, and it is the reason the night ended the way it did rather than with a mere reprimand.

Clara had, in truth, been prepared to let a great deal go.

Rudeness to herself, she could absorb; she had absorbed worse, from more powerful people, in boardrooms across the world, and she had long ago stopped taking personal offense at the small cruelties of small people.

Had the two men merely been curt with her, merely lazy, merely failed to find her booking through inattention, she might well have corrected them and moved on, chalked it up to a hard night at a busy desk.