"Good, good! What are they?" Thompson replied hungrily, in the tone of one who poises a pencil. "First, the subject for my address to the Off-campus Mothers week after next, 'Pre-marital Relations and the College Student.' Second, my theatrical friends--you know the ones I mean--will be playing in the city at the same time, and I shall invite them to be guests of the college." "But--" The poised pencil had obviously been dropped like a red-hot poker. "That's all, Thompson. Perhaps I shall have something more interesting another time. Good-by." He felt a stinging sensation in his hand. He had been fingering a little obsidian knife he used for slitting envelopes. It had gashed his finger. Blood smeared the clear volcanic glass where once, he told himself, had been the blood of sacrifice or ritual scarification. Clumsy--The nine-o'clock buzzer cut short his musing. He ripped a bandage from his handkerchief. As he hurried down the corridor, Bronstein fell into step with him. "We're pulling for you this morning, Dr. Saylor," he murmured heartily. "What do you mean?" Bronstein's grin was a trifle knowing. "A girl who works in the president's office told us they were deciding on the sociology chairmanship. I sure hope the old buzzards show some sense for once." Academic dignity stiffened Norman's reply. "In any case, I will be satisfied with their decision." Bronstein felt the rebuff. "Of course, I didn't mean to--" "Of course you didn't." He immediately regretted his sharpness. Why the devil should he rebuke a student for failing to reverence trustees as representatives of deity? Why pretend he didn't want the chairmanship? Why conceal his contempt for half the faculty? The anger he thought he had worked out of his system surged up with redoubled violence. On a sudden irresistible impulse he tossed his lecture notes aside and started in to tell the class just what he thought of the world and Hempnell. They might as well find out young! Fifteen minutes later he came to with a jerk in the middle of a sentence about "dirty-minded old women, in whom greed for social prestige has reached the magnitude of a perversion." He could not remember half of what he had been saying. He searched the faces of his class. They looked excited but puzzled, most of them, and a few looked shocked. Gracine Pollard was glaring. Yes! He remembered now that he had made a neat but nasty analysis of the politic motives of a certain college president who could be none other than Randolph Pollard. And somewhere he had started off on that premarital-relations business, and had been ribald about it, to say the least. And he had-- Exploded. Like a Prince Rupert drop. He finished off with half a dozen lame generalities. He knew they must be quite inappropriate, for the looks grew more puzzled. But the class seemed very remote. A shiver was spreading downward from the base of his skull, all because of a few words that had printed themselves in his mind.