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more demanding. Raphael sometimes had nightmares about her during the week, vivid, disconnected dreams of being suffocated by the warm, perfumed pillows of her breasts or crushed between the powerful white columns of her thighs. He began to dread the weekends, but the lure of her was too strong, and helplessly he delivered himself each Friday evening to her perfumed lair by the shores of the lake, where she waited—sometimes, he almost felt, lurked—in heavy-lidded anticipation.
    “Have you read the Karpinsky book yet?” It was the girl, Marilyn Hamilton, and she spoke to him as they came out of the library one evening after it closed.
    “I’m nearly finished with it,” he replied.
    “I don’t know,” she said, falling into step beside him, “but it seemed to me that he evades the issue.”
    “He does seem a little too pat,” Raphael agreed.
    “Glib. Like someone who talks very fast so you don’t have time to spot the holes in his argument.”
    They had stopped near the center of the broad lawn in front of Eliot Hall.
    “Pardee seems to think a lot of him,” Raphael said.
    “Oh yes,” the girl said, laughing slightly. The vibrance of her voice pierced him. “Mr. Pardee studied under Karpinsky at Columbia.”
    “I didn’t know that.”
    “My sister found out. She took the course a couple years ago. Mr. Pardee won’t mention it in class, of course, but it’s a good thing to know.” She suddenly mimicked their instructor’s gruff voice and deliberately antigrammatical usage. “Since he ain’t about to accept no disrespect.”
    Raphael laughed, charmed by her.
    She hesitated and then spoke without looking at him. “I saw you play in that game last month,” she told him quietly.
    “Oh,” he said, “that. It wasn’t much of a game, really.”
    “Not the way you played, it wasn’t. You destroyed them.”
    “You think I overemphasized?” he asked, grinning.
    “I’m trying to pay you a compliment, dammit.” Then she grinned back.
    “Thank you.”
    “I’m making a fool of myself, right?” “No, not really.”
    “Anyway, I thought it was really spectacular—and I don’t like football very much.”
    “It’s only a game.” He shrugged. “It’s more fun to play than it is to watch.”
    “Doesn’t it hurt when you get tackled like that?”
    “The idea is not to get tackled.”
    “You’re a stubborn man, Raphael Taylor,” she accused. “It’s almost impossible to talk to you.” “Me?”
    “And will you stop looking at me all the time. Every time I look up, there you are, watching me. You make me feel as if I don’t have any clothes on.”
    “I’m sorry.”
    “I’ll start making faces at you if you don’t stop it,” she warned. “Then how would you feel?”
    “The question is how are you going to feel when people start to think your gears aren’t meshing?”
    “You’re impossible,” she said, but her voice was not really
    angry. “I have to go home and study some more.” She turned abruptly and strode away with a curiously leggy gait that seemed at once awkward and almost childishly feminine.
    “Marilyn,” he called after her.
    She stopped and turned. “What?”
    “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
    “No, you won’t. I’m going to hide under the table.” She stuck her tongue out at him, turned, and continued across the lawn. Raphael laughed.
    Their growing friendship did not, of course, go unobserved. By the time it had progressed to the stage of going for coffee together at the Student Union Building, Flood became aware of it. “Raphael’s being unfaithful to you, ‘Bel,” he announced on one of his now-infrequent visits to the lake.
    “Get serious,” Raphael told him, irritated and a little embarrassed.
    “Don’t be a snitch, Junior,” Isabel said quite calmly. “Nobody likes a snitch.”
    “I just thought you ought to know, ‘Bel.” Flood grinned maliciously. “Since I introduced you two, I feel a certain responsibility.” His eyes, however,