Rick was laughing with a touch of the locker room.

“I’ll bet they don’t!”

“Wanna bet?”

“Not on my salary, Wilf. An assistant professor—”

“Assistant? But weren’t you full?”

“Honestly, Wilf—”

“It may well be on your letter, somewhere in that quaint old house, nailed in a tea chest: ‘—of the Department of English and Allied Studies, University of Astrakhan, Nebraska’. I remember it so clearly because it led straight on to that night.”

“Wilf. I’d sooner not.”

His voice faded, as it had faded in Seville. Mary Lou was sitting very tall and looking straight ahead. She swallowed—a lovely movement of the throat, Eve’s Apple. She spoke without turning her head.

“Remember, hon. Cross your heart.”

“But, hon—”

“You best tell Mr Barclay, hon. You’ll never rest quiet else.”

“What is this, you two? Something I don’t know about?”

“Mr Barclay. He wasn’t a professor as of that date. He was a postgraduate student and he borrowed the fare off’n his mom to come to you in vacation.”

“I was desperate, Wilf. You were my, my—”

“Assignment?”

“Special subject. It’s official, Wilf.”

“Only remember, Mr Barclay, she was a really wicked person. Rick’s told me about her.”

“About who?”

“Ella. I’m glad you’ve told him you weren’t a professor then, hon.”

“I’m glad too, hon. So now I’ve told you, Wilf—”

“Mary Lou told me. Husband and wife—”

But Rick was staring across at Mary Lou with an expression of less than perfect devotion.

“—and I have tenure and I am an assistant professor and I have a kind of sabbatical.”

“And I know you’ll feel better now, hon. Now you can go on like you begun, hon. It’s best. Always.”

The sun was bright behind the trees, the leaves showering their shadows across the gravel. Every tiny wave sparkled on the lake. It all made me laugh.

“I’d quite forgotten what it’s like to talk in—well, our mid-Atlantic lingo!”

I slid my arm along the back of the seat.

“So much for Rick’s confession, Mary Lou. How about you? Anything to declare?”

“Well, no, I guess not.”

She moved slightly away from me again.

“But you mustn’t go!”

“It’s not that, Wilf. She doesn’t want to impose. She knows how generous you are. I’ve told her.”

“That’s right,” I said out of my fatuity. “What’s it to be, Mary Lou? The crown jewels or a moon rock?”

Mary Lou slid right off the end of the bench. It was deftly done for she rose to her feet, dusting off her calf-length skirt as she did so.

“I’ll get back, hon. You two have so much to talk about.”

She went very quickly and a cold wind poured down the slope behind the bluff and dulled the lake to pewter. Somehow it brought the dustbin back to mind.

“Rick. You are a con man. Nothing but. My congratulations. It’s far more interesting than scholarship.”

“I was meaning to tell you, Wilf. I was going to be a professor. I knew that.”