l
attention to her, it annoyed him frightfully that he did.

She was good-looking, of course--a rather boyishly splendid young
creature of somewhere about twenty, with a heap of hair that had, in
spite of its rather commonplace chestnut color, a sort of electric
vitality about it. She was slightly prognathous, which gave a humorous
lift to her otherwise sensible nose. She had good straight-looking,
expressive eyes, too, and a big, wide, really beautiful mouth, with
square white teeth in it, which, when she smiled or yawned--and she
yawned more luxuriously than any girl who had ever sat in his
classes--exerted a sort of hypnotic effect on him. All that, however,
left unexplained the quality she had of making you, whatever she did,
irresistibly aware of her. And, conversely, unaware of every one else
about her. A bit of campus slang occurred to him as quite literally
applicable to her. She had all the rest of them faded.

It wasn't, apparently, an effect she tried for. He had to acquit her of
that. Not even, perhaps, one that she was conscious of. When she came
early to one of his lectures--it didn't happen often--the men, showed a
practical unanimity in trying to choose seats near by, or at least where
they could see her. But while this didn't distress her at all--they were
welcome to look if they liked--she struck no attitudes for their
benefit. A sort of breezy indifference--he selected that phrase finally
as the best description of her attitude toward all of them, including
himself. When she was late, as she usually was, she slid
unostentatiously into the back row--if possible at the end where she
could look out the window. But for three minutes after she had come in,
he knew he might as well have stopped his lecture and begun reciting the
Greek alphabet. She was, in the professor's mind, the final argument
against coeducation. Her name was Rosalind Stanton, but his impression
was that they called her Rose.

The bell rang out in the corridor. He dismissed the class and began
stacking up his notes. Then:

"Miss Stanton," he said.

She detached herself from the stream that was moving toward the door,
and with a good-humored look of inquiry about her very expressive
eyebrows, came toward him. And then he wished he hadn't called her. She
had spoiled his lecture--a perfectly good lecture--and his impulse had
been to remonstrate with her. But the moment he saw her coming, he knew
he wasn't going to be able to do it. I