It was a graceless acceptance, but he did not mind. At least now the day would have its meaning, would be moving toward two o’clock, when he would have together in the same room the two people he loved best in the world. It was going to be all right.

“Isn’t it a beautiful day?” she said, suddenly scuffing a pile of leaves, like a small child, looking round at him and smiling again, that smile which flooded his whole being like liquor. He was too moved to smile back. He felt his cheek twitching. How much does she know? What does she really feel? he wondered. He felt exposed, aware of the hole in his sock, of the shabbiness of his corduroy coat, wishing suddenly that he did not have such small features, that he were taller, that he were the kind of man women instinctively admired.

Of course she was late. He waited at the head of the stairs in Longfellow Hall while the other members of the seminar stood around, smoking, lazy and casual; he tried to conceal his impatience. She came up the stairs just behind Cavan, slowed down by Cavan’s preoccupied progress. He looks—ill—George said to himself anxiously. No, not ill—what was it then?—as if he was carrying a heavy weight.

“Sir”—George waited for the eyes to lift and met a look so naked and intense, that he stepped back. “Professor——”

“Hello, George, what is it?” The look vanished and Cavan turned to him a bit impatiently. Had George dreamed that strange piercing glance that did not see him at all, that was looking only inward, and looking at something terrible?

“I—I wondered if I could bring a guest, Miss Wallace, today?”

Pen stood just behind them, just not on the landing, looking amused.

“I suppose so.”

“She’s right here—Pen, this is Professor Cavan.” It was all now unbelievably awkward.

“Well, since you’re here”—Cavan made a gesture of acknowledgment, the barest acknowledgment, and went into the room where they sat round a long oval table, some twelve of them, all graduate students. There was the usual shuffling around, lighting of cigarettes, a request to open the window. George saw everything, as if because of Pen’s presence he sat watching a play. Cavan appeared to him as a stranger, hunched forward in a listening attitude, a pad and pencil in front of him, none of the usual professorial paraphernalia and even his reddish hair that wouldn’t lie flat, unlike any image one might have of a distinguished scholar; the blue eyes, absolutely humorless at the moment, looked out disturbingly alive, as if they were living eyes in a mask. These eyes glanced over at Pen with some curiosity and then at George. The minute Cavan came into a room, the whole atmosphere became charged. That was the strange thing.