Robert took possession of the desk nearest him and was at once ejected.
Its rightful owner scowled darkly at him. At the next desk he tried to
anchor himself, and there was a scuffle and a smothered exchange of
blows, from which he escaped with a scraped shin and a strange,
unfamiliar sense of being afraid. There was no fight in him. He
didn't want to fight. He wanted to belong--to be one of the herd--and
he knew dimly that he would first have to learn its laws and submit to
its tortures. He tried to grin back when the titter, which seemed
endemic, broke out afresh as he stumbled on his ignominious pilgrimage,
but the unasked-for partition in their amusement seemed to exasperate
them. They whispered things to one another. They commented on his
clothes. He realized suddenly how poorly dressed he was. There was a
patch on the knee of his trousers and a mended tear on his shiny
jacket. His finger-nails weren't very clean. Christine had gone off
too early to be sure that he had done them, and he had never thought
much of that sort of thing. Now he was paralysed with shame. He could
feel the tears strangling him.

Fortunately the desk in the far corner belonged to nobody. It was old
and battered and covered with the undecipherable carvings of his
predecessors, but at once he loved it. It was his. Its retired
position seemed to offer him protection. He hid behind it, drawing a
long, shuddering sigh of thankfulness.

The little dark man stood on the raised platform and surveyed them all.
His expression was nearly a grimace; as though he had just swallowed a
disagreeable medicine. He pursed his lips and held tight to the lapels
of his coat, his piercing yet distressful eyes blinking rapidly behind
their glasses with a kind of nervous malice.