Isabel, walking with Ivan Goldberg through Harvard Square, thought she had never seen so many queer people gathered in one place in her life. If it was not an old lady with ragged gray hair, hatless and carrying a peculiar green bag stuffed with books, it was a cluster of boys of all shapes, sizes, and colors, or a tiny man with a goatee and flowing mustaches who looked as if he had stepped out of a Tchekov play. But they all wore some mark in common, the mark, she supposed, of intellectual people; they looked as if they needed sleep and fresh air. She was so absorbed in these impressions that she almost forgot the tall stranger at her side, with his air of serene superiority, shepherding her now into a kind of back alley.

“I brought you this way because from here one gets a rather charming vignette. Look, just ahead there, that old brick building and the Christ Church Tower behind it. Quite eighteenth century, isn’t it?” He gave it to her like a present, rather formally.

“That’s Edward’s church, isn’t it? Where I was this morning?”

“Yes.”

“I’m taking you to a French restaurant,” he announced in his precise way. “We can have a glass of wine, and also it’s a bit less exposed than the Faculty Club. I hope you don’t mind.”

“Of course not.” Then they said very little until they were settled in a booth in this rather dark restaurant, filled with excitable people around them, all talking at once. Professor Goldberg studied the menu for what seemed a very long time, and while he did so, Isabel studied him. She was trying to decide why one would know he was a professor anywhere—in spite of his banker’s gray suit, his immaculate blue shirt and dark blue tie. Was it the small very bright eyes behind rather thick glasses, or the slightly superior way he had of smiling, or his manner which from the beginning had been, it seemed to her, that of a teacher with a pupil?

“I recommend an omelette, a mushroom omelette, and a salad,” he said as if it were a matter of some importance. Then when she had agreed and he had given the order and chosen the wine, there came a pause. They had reached the frontier of small talk and they would have to come to the point. Why in fact had he wished to see her, she wondered? Curiosity? Even malice?