The waitress brought their beer and George felt the tight knot inside him relax a fraction. When Pen said “dear,” she meant it. “Darling” meant nothing at all.

“I’d just got to the point when I thought I knew what I was doing—I almost called you that night, I was so excited”—he found it unexpectedly difficult to talk. It was as if there were some obstruction in his throat and his voice came out deep and queer which bothered him—“Now it’s like a whirlpool. I just go round and round.”

“It’s thrown the whole college, George. It’s not just you. Girls in the dorm cried and carried on like nobody’s business.” There was, he noticed, a slight edge in her voice.

“Well, you understood something about it at that seminar, didn’t you? Do you remember what you said, that it was altogether different from any course you’d had, didn’t seem like Harvard?” He asked sternly. He had not liked her tone.

“I’m glad you took me. Awfully glad.” But she was following some track of her own. “What I don’t get is the political angle, George.”

It struck George like a blow, the coldness of her tone, the perfect detachment. There was something relentless about this girl, something relentless even in her eagerness, her brilliance, something which didn’t want to give, didn’t want to feel. It was their old battle, but now on another level than sex. Recognizing it, he felt exhausted.

“I guess I’m too confused to talk,” he said miserably.

“But to commit suicide for political reasons seems to me crazy,” she pleaded. “Don’t you think so?”

“Masaryk did.”

“Who was he?” she asked absent-mindedly.

“Good God, Pen, you live in this world, don’t you?” He was suddenly furious. “Maybe you don’t.”

“Well, don’t blow up. I remember now, of course. But he was right in the middle of things. There was no way out for him. This seems like such a waste.” The warm light flowed back into her face, and she said quite humbly, “Talk to me, George. Try to tell me. I’ve felt so queer and lonely, not being really part of all this. Except”—she reached across to him with a look—“I’ve known what it means to you in your work.”

“It’s not that,” he said quickly, brushing his work aside.

“Tell me, George, try to tell me,” she said, becoming again the girl he loved and not the antagonist he had seen a moment ago, the unyielding girl, the girl locked up against feeling.