"Hmm?" Charles Bewick looked up, blinking, as if the boy were hardly there. He met the clear, brown eyes again, and his heart bumped. "What is it, son?"

"Is this the price, here?"

Gently Charles took the book from him, turned it and laid it on the typewriter. "Yes, yes. Eight fifty."

The boy's clear forehead creased. Into his pocket went a hand and came out with crumpled bills-two, three?-and change. He laid these on the counter and began to count. Terribly moved by their fragility, Charles turned his eyes away from the thin fingers. He contemplated the book.

Italian Sculpture was its title, and on the cover was a photograph of Donatello's David, a slender lad with a quaint kind of bonnet on his head and, otherwise, except for greaves, quite naked, left hand on his hip, right hand grasping lightly the hilt of a tremendous sword, its tip in the neck of the decapitated giant at his feet. It was the loveliest, most sensual of the Davids, and Charles Bewick studied it now, lovingly.

"Sir?" The boy was pushing away the money. "I don't have that much. See, I just started here, and everything's so-expensive." His smile was plaintive and, for rather a longer moment than necessary, his look was direct and inquiring. Then the eyes lowered, the soft lashes coming down over them in the same way those of Donatello's David did. Indeed, without his clothes, this boy would be, in warm flesh, what the David was in cold bronze, delicate, graceful, perfect... "I'm so sorry," Charles Bewick said.

"I could-" The boy looked at him again. "I could-" His face flushed under the transparent skin. "If there was something you-you'd like me to do for you?" "A job?" Charles Bewick smiled regretfully. "I'm afraid this shop is too small to need help. I-"

The boy was shaking his head, the sculptured mouth tightening a little at the corners. "I didn't exactly mean-well, a job." The trace of a frown appeared above the brown eyes, and they openly pleaded now. "I meant, well-" The beautifully square and lightly-fleshed shoulders shrugged. "A favor." He leaned forward. "You know what I'm talking about," he smiled. "And then, afterward, well-you could give me the book." He looked down at it again. "I need it for a class."

Charles Bewick's heart knocked crazily. He could not seem to get his breath. He sat down and stared at the averted face, the head of curls. Dear God! This was simply not fair. To be asked to resist the mere presence of these boys was sufficiently unreasonable of fate. But to have this one come and offer himself was too much.

"You are making a grave mistake," he said, and his voice trembled. "I am not that sort of man." The boy looked at him in alarm. "And if I were, do you suppose I would be so excessively stupid as to accept your offer? Why, you might exact from me everything I possess. You might bring others here who would expect the same attentions from me, the same rewards. No, my boy." He sat forward and gripped the book in both hands. "You may not have this book, or any other. Now, good night."

The boy fled, and Charles Bewick sat unmoving for a long time, wondering how he would explain to Helen his abrupt decision to sell the shop and return to library work.

15