MIT was a male world, its administrators and instructors all but exclusively male, and a number of them military men. Though the great post-war tide of veterans was receding, uniforms were still common on campus. Of six thousand students, no more than one hundred twenty were women, and half of these were graduate students. Phyllis Goodhue stood out, then, as one of a decided minority, outnumbered fifty to one in the endless corridors—floors of tan terrazzo and doors of frosted glass strictly numbered in black, even the women’s lavatory: 3-101-WOMEN. She was yet more noticeable among the springtime sunbathers in the Great Court, a large sheltered lawn, between Buildings 3 and 4, that overlooked the new segment of Memorial Drive, its double row of sycamores, and, in their gaps, the sparkling, playful Charles and the rosy low profile of Back Bay. Most of the female undergraduates were not lovely—driven grinds with neglected figures and complexions, heads down in the hallways as they bucked the tide, trying to blend in with the boys—and Owen had to look twice at Phyllis to verify that she was. Was lovely.

True or false? Was twice necessary? No: from the start, through that river-chilled, sleepless, and miserable first year in which his head was being stuffed with, among other rafts of basic data, introductory circuit theory (Kirchhoff’s law and Thévenin’s and Norton’s theorems, step function and impulse response, resonance phenomena and conjugate impedances), whenever Owen passed Phyllis in one of the thronged corridors, his own electromagnetic field changed, by an amount as subtle but as crucial as the difference between d and dt. There was a numbness only she inflicted. Her presence transformed the odd-shaped cement-paved spaces scattered among the buildings west of the Kendall Square subway stop, where bleary students loitered over gossip and cigarettes; like Ginger Bitting, this apparition had satellites, a few other girls but, inevitably in this environment, mostly boys. Owen’s eyes placed her at the center of this set, though in truth she never appeared to dominate. In a boisterous cluster she stood at the edge and appeared diffidently amused; she never laughed the loudest. She had a light but clear, carrying voice—he could overhear her long before seeing her—and careful gestures, restrained by a reluctance to impose herself that moved him and emboldened him. At his watchful distance, her pallor was a beacon, a broadcast resonance.