But just then I wasn't disposed to be
critical. I was full of the sense of her presence; her arm was stretched
out over me as she moved past me, the gracious slenderness of her body
was near me. The words we used didn't seem very greatly to matter. I had
vague ideas of getting out with her--and I didn't.
That encounter, I have no doubt, exercised me enormously. I lay awake
at night rehearsing it, and wondering about the next phase of our
relationship. That took the form of the return of my twopence. I was
in the Science Library, digging something out of the Encyclopedia
Britannica, when she appeared beside me and placed on the open page an
evidently premeditated thin envelope, bulgingly confessing the coins
within.
"It was so very kind of you," she said, "the other day. I don't know
what I should have done, Mr.--"
I supplied my name. "I knew," I said, "you were a student here."
"Not exactly a student. I--"
"Well, anyhow, I knew you were here frequently. And I'm a student myself
at the Consolidated Technical Schools."
I plunged into autobiography and questionings, and so entangled her in
a conversation that got a quality of intimacy through the fact that,
out of deference to our fellow-readers, we were obliged to speak in
undertones.
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