"Thank you so much," she said in a pleasant soft voice; and then less gracefully, "Awfully kind of you, you know."
I fancy I made polite noises. But just then I wasn't disposed to be critical. I was full of the sense of her presence, her arm was stretched out over me as she moved past me, the gracious slenderness of her body was near me. The words we used didn't seem very greatly to matter. I had vague ideas of getting out with her—and I didn't.
That encounter, I have no doubt, exercised me enormously. I lay awake at night rehearsing it, and wondering about the next phase of our relationship. That took the form of the return of my twopence. I was in the Science Library, digging something out of the Encyclopædia Britannica, when she appeared beside me and placed on the open page an evidently premeditated thin envelope, bulgingly confessing the coins within.
"It was so very kind of you," she said, "the other day. I don't know what I should have done, Mr. "
I supplied my name. "I knew," I said, "you were a student here."
"Not exactly a student. I"
"Well, anyhow, I knew you were here frequently. And I'm a student myself at the Consolidated Technical Schools."
I plunged into autobiography and questionings, and so entangled her in a conversation that got a quality of intimacy through the fact that, out of deference to our fellow-readers, we were obliged to speak in undertones. And I have no doubt that in substance it was singularly banal. Indeed I have an impression that all our early conversations were incredibly banal. We met several
