Now her thick dark hair was worn almost short, fashionably short, shaped like a helmet with the ends turned smoothly under, against their natural wave. She rubbed in a very light makeup beneath her eyes to disguise the faint shadows; and the disguise was wonderfully successful. She was no madonna now, no somber mater dolorosa waiting inside a gilt frame to be adored; she was an Amazon of a sort, a warrior woman, making her own way, confident and assured . . . or so it seemed.

She regarded herself in the mirror with critical satisfaction. Yes. Good. That was her self—the way she was turning out—the way in which her fleshly destiny led. (Such extravagant metaphors should have embarrassed her, but did not; in this phase of her life—rather brief, rather overwrought, but in any case “successful”—she felt that each hour, each minute, was in some way the mystical consummation of all that had gone before. She intended to be equal to it.)

Staring at herself, she wondered if Maximilian Fein would approve of her now. Seeing that he had helped shape her—this. And what of Emmett, Emmett Schroeder, what might he think; would he be impressed, would he (did he know enough to be) envious, jealous? (All she knew of Emmett these days, these years, was that he’d married a girl not known to Wilma, lived in Innisfail, was a partner in his father’s construction business.)

Would Vera Sanjek know her, Marya wondered, eyeing herself, raising her forehead into a pattern of light creases, would they even recognize each other, face to face?

THE DEPARTMENTAL CHAIRMAN called Marya into his office to tell her good news, the kind of news (he said, clearing his throat nervously) he dearly wished he might tell everyone. . . . Her contract was being renewed for three years; the salary increment she would be receiving was higher than the average—in fact, for her rank, considerably higher; the committee on promotion and tenure had received a number of very strong letters of evaluation from her students, though, evidently, she had been grading rather conservatively. (“New teachers sometimes make the error of inflating grades,” he told Marya, “hoping to flatter their students into liking them, admiring them. But it doesn’t work here—it earns their disrespect. It might work very well at other colleges where standards aren’t quite so high but it doesn’t work here.”)