That settled it, and they were able to bring their tea outside, to sit alone among all the empty tables in the late warm sunlight while Pen’s question reverberated and echoed, and they came back to it, their heads close together like conspirators.

“Tell me,” George urged, though he was afraid, afraid of what Pen’s eyes had seen, wanting suddenly to protect Cavan, to throw a cloak of words round him so Pen would never know, never guess the terrible look he had intercepted at the head of the stairs. “Why do you say ‘hurt’? It’s such a strange word.”

“I don’t know”—she looked dreamily about her, and he felt she was about to escape him again, withdraw into her inner world.

“You must know,” he said urgently. “You can’t fling a sentence like that around and not know—it’s irresponsible——”

“You sound like my tutor.”

“Don’t. This is important.”

“Oh very well.” She leaned her chin on her hand, frowning. “When Professor Cavan talks about things he cares about, it’s terrific, but it’s”—she hesitated again—“it’s almost too much, George. I mean it’s as if he were battering down a wall inside himself to get through, and so one feels battered too—it’s exciting, but disturbing. You’ll hate me for this”—she turned to him now quite seriously—“but should anyone allow himself to be that exposed—a professor?”

“Is that why you said ‘where are we’?”

“I suppose so. One expects a professor to be a little less or a little more than human—I think that’s it. They all have their attitudes, their little jokes, their ways to protect themselves. But Cavan is just there, with no defenses, nothing between him and the class.”

“Except the subject, Pen—or rather,” George corrected himself a little stiffly, “an attitude toward the subject. You felt that surely?”

“I was awfully uncomfortable all the time,” she confessed.

This George recognized as the truth, and he minded. The class, when they talked about Cavan over beer or in their rooms, had not one of them ever admitted this, but it was the truth. Yet they would not have missed a single meeting for the world. They were attracted and at the same time disturbed, made uncomfortable, as Pen said.

“But it’s not what he says”—George turned to her earnestly—“is it? I mean if you wrote down everything he said today, every word made sense—at least to me. It was right at the center of things, wasn’t it? Wasn’t that what you felt?”

“Absolutely.”

George sighed with relief. Such an unequivocal affirmation from Pen was a triumph.

“Well then?”

“I don’t know, George,” she said quietly. “Do you?”