* *

"And thus," Forrester said tiredly, "having attempted to make himself
the equal of the Gods, Man was given a punishment befitting such
arrogance." He paused and took a breath, surveying the twenty-odd
students in the classroom (and some, he told himself wryly, _very_ odd)
with a sort of benign boredom.

History I, Introductory Survey of World History, was a simple enough
course to teach, but its very simplicity was its undoing, Forrester
thought. The deadly dullness of the day-after-day routine was enough to
wear out the strongest soul.

Freshmen, too, seemed to get stupider every year. Certainly, when _he'd_
been seventeen, he'd been different altogether. Studious, earnest,
questioning ...

Then he stopped himself and grinned. He'd probably seemed even worse to
his own instructors.

Where had he been? Slowly, he picked up the thread. There was a young
blonde girl watching him eagerly from a front seat. What was her name?
Forrester tried to recall it and couldn't. Well, this was only the first
day of term. He'd get to know them all soon enough--well enough,
anyhow, to dislike most of them.

But the eager expression on the girl's face unnerved him a little. The
rest of the class wasn't paying anything like such strict attention. As
a matter of fact, Forrester suspected two young boys in the back of
being in a trance.

Well, he could stop that. But ...

She was really quite attractive, Forrester told himself. Of course, she
was nothing but a fresh, pretty, eager seventeen-year-old, with a figure
that ...

She was, Forrester reminded himself sternly, a student.

And he was supposed to be an instructor.

He cleared his throat. "Man went hog-wild with his new-found freedom
from divine guidance," he said. "Woman did, too, as a matter of fact."

Now what unholy devil had made him say that? It wasn't a part of the
normal lecture for first day of the new term. It was--well, it was
just a little risque for students. Some of their parents might complain,
and ...

But the girl in the front row was smiling appreciatively. _I wonder what
she's doing in an Introductory course_, Forrester thought, leaping with
no evidence at all to the conclusion that the girl's mind was much too
fine and educated to be subjected to the general run of classes.
_Private tutoring_ ... he began, and then cut himself off sharply, found
his place in the lecture again and went on:

"When the Gods decided to sit back and ob