the eaves on to the shrubs beneath the windows, and gazed at the boy with a longing that very nearly halted his customary even and musical flow of words and ideas. Each time Simon's fine dark eyes turned toward him, shining, each time his perfect mouth moved to speak, Charles had wanted to cry out to him, "Simon you are very beautiful and very desirable. Permit me voyage." But he could not. And before eleven, impatient at his own cowardice, he was driving Simon back to his dormitory.

"Thanks for the nice evening, Mr. Bewick." Simon opened the car door. The rain wept in the trees, haloed the street lamps down the dark block. "I'd like to do it again sometime. Sorry I was stand-offish about accepting. See-there's this prof here on campus, asked me to his place one night. He-" The boy's laugh was unamused, embarrassed. "He made passes at me." Simon shrugged. "Well, okay, so he likes boys. He still ought to have a little sense. I never said anything, but if it had been some guys all they'd have cared about was the laughs they'd get when they told the story. Pretty soon it'd have been all over the campus, what he was and what he'd done."

"Deplorable," Charles Bewick said. He forced a smile that he hoped was urbane and reassuring. "Well, I'm delighted that you enjoyed the evening, Simon. So did I. We'll certainly do it again."

But we had not done it again. Indeed we had not. Helen had been quite correct: keep the circle of their old intimacy inviolate. He fled to her, his time-honored refuge, as he had fled when he was twenty-two, fled from the troubled secret association with Fred Carpenter, fled before his family could inquire too deeply, could suspect too much of the truth, fled not only into marriage, but to the cloisters of the library too, away from the world and the knowledge that there were handsome boys the sight of whom made his heart hurry.

But now he was not in the library. The boys came to the shop. There was no way to deny them, and their presence became an increasing torment. He turned them off briskly with the excuse that he had work to do, letters to write, bills to mail. He deliberately kept morning paperwork for evening, to legitimatize his excuses. The typewriter clattered. And when they insisted on talking to him, and he yielded and, relaxing in his chair, laughed, bantered, advised, an irritable voice inside him scolded:

You are grayhaired, forty-three years old, myopic, your teeth are largely bridgework, you are slightly over-weight, in bed you snore. What would any of these straight and firm-fleshed, bright-eyed, white-toothed boys want with you? Wit, worldly wisdom, erudition-are these coins recognized in the marketplace of the libido? Don't be a fool.

This had become the litany of his days and nights. This, and Simon's warning. Suppose he elected to make what the newspapers referred to as "an indecent proposal" to one of these lads-the wrong one, and which would not be wrong? His predisposition would soon be the talk of the town. The college authorities would descend. He would be lucky if the police did not descend. The book shop would be a thing of the past. Worst of all would be Helen's contempt. So, he advised himself with a wry smile, look, it costs nothing to look. Look, but do not touch. Yet it did cost-not pain precisely, but a dull ache, and the minutes slipping away, the days, the months, the years.

Now the tall, slender child came down the aisle toward him, bearing a large book, an art book. He laid it on the counter.

"Excuse me?"

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