This has the ring of self-destructiveness to James, and she can't quite tell why. Does he expect reading that book to be upsetting? Does he expect that she can't or won't actually produce a copy, and want to upset himself by asking for something he wants and then not getting it? Is it just how he feels about offering up even so trivial a vulnerability as the memory of a book he liked?

But she thinks the best she can do is probably to take him at his word.

"I'll see what I can do," she says, and goes.