I’d been thinking quickly. “Go back to the Grand Union Polytechnic and ask Dr. Bodmer to let me change my course.”

“They have Ph.D.’s on the faculty, do they? I am surprised. Change to what?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I’ll let you know. I’ll”—I sought for a term and came up with the worst I could have—“keep you in the picture.”

“A young woman who uses stale metaphors of that sort might be best suited to—journalism and media studies, do they call it?”

“In the picture” was no worse, as far as I could see, than “working her fingers to the bone.” Max, his head oscillating in that controlled tremor, said I could go, called me back when I got to the door to say that he hoped I had discussed all this with my parents. Next time I phoned home he’d like a word with my father. I escaped. Silver was waiting for me in the café, drinking black coffee and eating croissants. He had found a shop where they sold diamanté cat collars and he presented me with a green velvet one, sparkling with brilliants, for Mabel.

“Suppose Max throws me out at the end of term,” I said.

We were holding hands across the tabletop. Can you imagine very pale water-gray eyes nevertheless being warm and full of love?

“There’s no problem. You can come and live with me.”