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the yellow cloth browny-purple, and for the mortar, well, try pure turps.”
    “No,” she pouted. “It’s not a joke. You’re just being a disgusting silly American. You think I’m stupid at paints.”
    Each day he sank deeper into a fatherly role; he welcomed any secure relationship with her, yet wondered if he wasn’t being, perhaps, neutralized. Except on technical matters, she never sought his advice until the day near the end of term when, conceding him in this sense a great stride forward, she asked, “How well do you know your friend Jack Fredericks?”
    “Not well at all. I wouldn’t call him my friend. He was a year younger in high school, and we weren’t really in the same social class either.”
    “The social classes in America—are they very strong?”
    “Well—the divisions aren’t as great as here, but there’re more of them.”
    “And he comes from a good class?”
    “Fair.” He thought reticence was his best tactic, but whenshe joined him in silence he was compelled to prod. “What makes you ask?”
    “Now, Leonard. You mustn’t breathe a word; if you do, I’ll absolutely shrivel. You see, he’s asked me to model for him.”
    “
Model
for him? He can’t paint.”
    “Yes he can. He’s shown me some of his things and they’re rather good.”
    “How does he mean ‘model’? Model in what condition?”
    “Yes. In the nude.” High color burned evenly in her face; she dabbed at the canvas.
    “That’s ridiculous. He doesn’t paint at all.”
    “But he
does
, Leonard. He’s taken it up very seriously. I’ve
seen
his things.”
    “What do they look like?”
    “Oh, rather abstract.”
    “I bet.”
    “
All
you Americans paint in the abstract.”
    “I don’t.” He didn’t feel this was much of a point to score.
    “He says I have a lovely body—”
    “Well,
I
could have told you
that
.” But he hadn’t.
    “—and
swears
, absolutely, there would be nothing to it. He’s even offered a model’s fee.”
    “Well, I never heard of such an embarrassing, awful scheme.”
    “Really, Leonard, it’s embarrassing only when you talk of it. I
know
he’s perfectly serious as a painter.”
    Leonard added a fleck of black to a mixture on his palette and sighed. “Well, Robin. You do whatever you want. It’s your life.”
    “Oh, I wouldn’t
dream
of
do
ing it. Mummy and Daddy would
die
.”
    His relief was overwhelmed by a sudden fierce sense ofbeing wronged. He said, “Don’t let
them
stand in your way. Why, this may be the start of a whole career for you.”
    “I mean, I never con
sid
ered it. I was just interested in your opinion of the man.”
    “My opinion is, he’s a
horrible
man. He’s a silly spoiled snob and about to get hog fat and I don’t see what attracts you in him. Terrible person. Terrible.”
    “Well, as you say, you don’t know him very well.”
    Leonard and the other unmarried veteran went to Europe during the Michaelmas vacation. On the Channel boat, his thoughts, free for the first time from the bustle of departure, returned to Robin, and the certainty of her turning Fredericks down warmed him on the cold, briny deck. In Paris the idea that she even toyed with such a proposition excited him; it suggested an area of willingness, of loneliness, that Leonard could feasibly invade. In Frankfurt he wondered if actually she would turn his fellow-countryman down—she was staying around the university during vacation, Leonard knew—and by Hamburg he was certain that she had not; she had succumbed. He grew accustomed to this conviction as he and his companion (who was devoting himself to a survey of all the beers of Europe) slowly circled back through the Lowlands. By the time he disembarked at Dover he was quite indifferent to her nakedness.
    The school had grown chillier in four weeks. In the Well, the arrangements of fruit had decayed; in case some of the students continued to work during the vacation, the things had not been disturbed. Their own still