A FALSE NOTE
65
her thoughts like jagged glass, sharp and quick, but the incision was
not pain but astonishment.
And he became, as she saw him more often, more fleetingly, a
dream; and in the dream, his face was in a cinema close-up, its eyes
with an integument of tragedy, its dark-skinned cheeks drawing nearer
to her, and his hands-how well she identified his hands !-gradually
encircling her face, and with an outer passivity that disguised an
inner trepidation (for she was spectator and participant at the same
time), she wanted him to kiss her. And although the desperation of
desire grimaced her face-no longer young, she saw, alas, no longer
young-he would not kiss her. And she would awaken, trembling,
biting her pillow, bereft with the sense that he had turned away.
Then she met him. She went to the college cafeteria for early
morning coffee, and trying to keep the liquid from slopping into the
saucer, she chose her seat arbitrarily. A few chairs away, at the same
refectory table, he was sitting alone, his attention no longer focused
on the newspaper propped before him, but on her, curious, quizzical.
It was almost with panic that she met his eyes, but he gave her
no sign of recognition, no indication that he remembered her. He
was simply watching a stranger sit near him
in
a public place. And
as he still made no sign, her panic transformed into chagrin, a pique,
as though the long familiar had snubbed her. And because she could
not bear this humiliation, she asked him quickly for the sugar please,
although she did not use sugar, trying to affix her presence with
more force upon him. For it was her vanity which insisted, he can–
not have forgotten me who remember so well.
But he merely slid the sugar bowl to her, nodding in response
to her thanks.
"Did you ever get to see Dean Harkness about your grades?"
she asked him.
He evinced no surprise. And again she felt, as she had felt that
first time, that he had subtly pressured her into conversation. But,
she asked herself, should I have expected surprise, are they ever sur–
prised? Haven't they, perhaps, been drained of a sense of the un–
expected, having experienced everything?
"No, ma'am," he said slowly. "I thought better of it. I thought
I'd better not try to see him at all."
"Oh," she said. "It couldn't have been important then."
"Important?" He considered the word for a moment and then
