good. But--I'm awfully sorry if you thought me inattentive. You see,
mother brought us all up on the Social Contract and The Age of Reason,
things like that, and I didn't put it down because ..."

"I see," he said. "I beg your pardon."

She smiled, cheerfully begged his and assured him she'd try to do
better.

Another girl who'd been waiting to speak to the professor, perceiving
that their conversation was at an end, came and stood beside her at the
desk--a scrawny girl with an eager voice, and a question she wanted to
ask about Robespierre; and for some reason or other, Rosalind Stanton's
valedictory smile seemed to include a consciousness of this other
girl--a consciousness of a contrast. It might not have been any more
than that, but somehow, it left the professor feeling that he had given
himself away.

He was particularly polite to the other girl, because his impulse was to
act so very differently.

There is nothing cloistral about the University of Chicago except its
architecture. The presence of a fat abbot, or a lady prioress in the
corridor outside the recitation room would have fitted in admirably with
the look of the warm gray walls and the carven pointed arches of the
window and door casements, the blackened oak of the doors themselves.

On the other hand, the appearance of the person whom Rose found waiting
for her out there, afforded the piquant effect of contrast. Or would
have done so, had the spectacle of him in that very occupation not been