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his brown wavy hair was graying at the temples, he looked rather like a college boy who twenty years after graduation glanced up from his books and found himself middle-aged.
    Dean Sutherland opened the door of her office and made a sign to him. “Can you spare me a minute, Dr. Bradshaw? Something serious has come up.” She was pale and grim, like a reluctant executioner.
    He excused himself. The two Deans shut themselves up with Dolly. The woman with the short and shining haircut frowned at the closed door. Then she gave me an appraising glance, as if she was looking for a substitute for Bradshaw. She had a promising mouth and good legs and a restless predatory air. Her clothes had style.
    “Looking for someone?” she said.
    “Just waiting.”
    “For Lefty or for Godot? It makes a difference.”
    “For Lefty Godot. The pitcher.”
    “The pitcher in the rye?”
    “He prefers bourbon.”
    “So do I,” she said. “You sound like an anti-intellectual to me, Mr.—”
    “Archer. Didn’t I pass the test?”
    “It depends on who does the grading.”
    “I’ve been thinking maybe I ought to go back to school. You make it seem attractive, and besides I feel so out of things when my intellectual friends are talking about Jack Kerouac and Eugene Burdick and other great writers, and I can’t read. Seriously, if I were thinking of going back to college, would you recommend this place?”
    She gave me another of her appraising looks. “Not for you, Mr. Archer. I think you’d feel more at home in some larger urban university, like Berkeley or Chicago. I went to Chicago myself. This college presents quite a contrast.”
    “In what way?”
    “Innumerable ways. The quotient of sophistication here is very low, for one thing. This used to be a denominational college, and the moral atmosphere is still in Victorian stays.” As if to demonstrate that she was not, she shifted her pelvis. “They tell me when Dylan Thomas visited here—but perhaps we’d better not go into that.
De mortuis nil nisi bonum.”
    “Do you teach Latin?”
    “No, I have small Latin and less Greek. I try to teach modern languages. My name is Helen Haggerty, by the way. As I was saying, I wouldn’t really recommend Pacific Point to you. The standards are improving every year, but there’s still a great deal of dead wood around. You can see some of it from here.”
    She cast a sardonic glance toward the entrance, where five or six of her fellow professors were conducting a post-mortem of their conference with the Dean.
    “That was Dean Bradshaw you were talking to, wasn’t it?”
    “Yes. Is he the one you want to see?”
    “Among others.”
    “Don’t be put off by his rather forbidding exterior. He’s a fine scholar—the only Harvard doctor on the faculty—and he can advise you better than I ever could. But tell me honestly, are you really serious about going back to college? Aren’t you kidding me a little?”
    “Maybe a little.”
    “You could kid me more effectively over a drink. And I could use a drink, preferably bourbon.”
    “It’s a handsome offer.” And a sudden one, I thought. “Give me a rain check, will you? Right now I have to wait for Lefty Godot.”
    She looked more disappointed than she had any right to be. We parted on fairly good, mutually suspicious terms.
    The fatal door I was watching opened at last. Dolly backed out thanking the two Deans effusively, and practically curtsying.But I saw when she turned around and headed for the entrance that her face was white and set.
    I went after her, feeling a little foolish. The situation reminded me of a girl I used to follow home from Junior High. I never did work up enough nerve to ask her for the privilege of carrying her books. But I began to identify Dolly with that unattainable girl whose name I couldn’t even remember now.
    She hurried along the mall that bisected the campus, and started up the steps of the library building. I caught up with her.
    “Mrs.