I looked at the cards, and then at the flame of the match burning with an unwavering clarity between his fingers.

"You're not too worried about this, are you?" I said.

Henry drew deeply on the cigarette, exhaled, shook out the match. "No," he said, looking thoughtfully at the thread of smoke that curled from the burnt end. "I can get us out of it, I think. But that depends on the exact opportunity presenting itself and for that we'll have to wait. I suppose it also depends to a certain extent on how much, in the end, we are willing to do. Shall I deal?" he said, and he reached for the cards again.

I awoke from a heavy, dreamless sleep to find myself lying on Francis's couch in an uncomfortable position, and the morning sun streaming through the bank of windows at the rear. For a while I lay motionless, trying to remember where I was and how I had come to be there; it was a pleasant sensation which was abruptly soured when I recalled what had happened the previous night. I sat up and rubbed the waffled pattern the sofa cushion had left on my cheek. The movement made my head ache. I stared at the overflowing ashtray, the three-quarters-empty bottle of Famous Grouse, the game of poker solitaire laid out upon the table. So it had all been real; it wasn't a dream.

I was thirsty. I went to the kitchen, my footsteps echoing in the silence, and drank a glass of water standing at the sink. It was seven a.m. by the kitchen clock.

I filled my glass again and took it to the living room with me and sat on the couch. As I drank, more slowly this time-bolting the first glass had made me slightly nauseous-I looked at Henry's solitaire poker game. He must have laid it out while I was asleep. Instead of going all out for flushes in the columns, and full houses and fours on the rows, which was the prudent thing to do in this game, he'd tried for a couple of straight flushes on the rows and missed. Why had he done that? To see if he could beat the odds? Or had he only been tired?

I picked up the cards and shuffled them and laid them out again one by one, in accordance with the strategic rules that he himself had taught me, and beat his score by fifty points. The cold, jaunty faces stared back at me: jacks in black and red, the Queen of Spades with her fishy eye. Suddenly a wave of fatigue and nausea shuddered over me, and I went to the closet, got my coat, and left, closing the door quietly behind me.

The hall, in the morning light, had the feel of a hospital corridor. Pausing unsteadily on the stairs, I looked back at Francis's door, indistinguishable from the others in the long faceless row.

I suppose if I had a moment of doubt at all it was then, as I stood in that cold, eerie stairwell looking back at the apartment from which I had come. Who were these people? How well did I know them? Could I trust any of them, really, when it came right down to it? Why, of all people, had they chosen to tell me?

It's funny, but thinking back on it now, I realize that this particular point in time, as I stood there blinking in the deserted hall, was the one point at which I might have chosen to do something very different from what I actually did. But of course I didn't see this crucial moment then for what it was; I suppose we never do. Instead, I only yawned, and shook myself from the momentary daze that had come upon me, and went on my way down the stairs.

Back in my room, dizzy and exhausted, I wanted more than anything to pull the shades and lie down on my bed-which seemed suddenly the most enticing bed in the world, musty pillow, dirty sheets, and all. But that was impossible. Greek Prose Composition was in two hours, and I hadn't done my homework.

The assignment was a two-page essay, in Greek, on any epigram of Callimachus that we chose. I'd done only a page and I started to hurry through the rest in impatient and slightly dishonest fashion, writing out the English and translating word by word. It was something Julian asked us not to do. The value of Greek prose composition, he said, was not that it gave one any particular facility in the language that could not be gained as easily by other methods but that if done properly, off the top of one's head, it taught one to think in Greek. One's thought patterns become different, he said, when forced into the confines of a rigid and unfamiliar tongue. Certain common ideas become inexpressible; other, previously undreamt-of ones spring to life, finding miraculous new articulation. By necessity, I suppose, it is difficult for me to explain in English exactly what I mean. I can only say that an incendium is in its nature entirely different from the feu with which a Frenchman lights his cigarette, and both are very different from the stark, inhuman pur that the Greeks knew, the pur that roared from the towers of Ilion or leapt and screamed on that desolate, windy beach, from the funeral pyre of Patroklos.

Pur: that one word contains for me the secret, the bright, terrible clarity of ancient Greek. How can I make you see it, this strange harsh light which pervades Homer's landscapes and illumines the dialogues of Plato, an alien light, inarticulable in our common tongue? Our shared language is a language of the intricate, the peculiar, the home of pumpkins and ragamuffins and bodkins and beer, the tongue of Ahab and Falstaff and Mrs. Gamp; and while I find it entirely suitable for reflections such as these, it fails me utterly when I attempt to describe in it what I love about Greek, that language innocent of all quirks and cranks; a language obsessed with action, and with the joy of seeing action multiply from action, action marching relentlessly ahead and with yet more actions filing in from either side to fall into neat step at the rear, in a long straight rank of cause and effect toward what will be inevitable, the only possible end.

In a certain sense, this was why I felt so close to the others in the Greek class. They, too, knew this beautiful and harrowing landscape, centuries dead; they'd had the same experience of looking up from their books with fifth-century eyes and finding the world disconcertingly sluggish and alien, as if it were not their home. It was why I admired Julian, and Henry in particular. Their reason, their very eyes and ears were fixed irrevocably in the confines of those stern and ancient rhythms-the world, in fact, was not their home, at least not the world as I knew it-and far from being occasional visitors to this land which I myself knew only as an admiring tourist, they were pretty much its permanent residents, as permanent as I suppose it was possible for them to be. Ancient Greek is a difficult language, a very difficult language indeed, and it is eminently possible to study it all one's life and never be able to speak a word; but it makes me smile, even today, to think of Henry's calculated, formal English, the English of a well-educated foreigner, as compared with the marvelous fluency and self-assurance of his Greek-quick, eloquent, remarkably witty. It was always a wonder to me when I happened to hear him and Julian conversing in Greek, arguing and joking, as I never once heard either of them do in English; many times, I've seen Henry pick up the telephone with an irritable, cautious 'Hello,' and may I never forget the harsh and irresistible delight of his "Khairei!" when Julian happened to be at the other end.

I was a bit uncomfortable-after the story I'd just heard-with the Callimachean epigrams having to do with flushed cheeks, and wine, and the kisses of fair-limbed youths by torchlight. I'd chosen instead a rather sad one, which in English runs as follows: "At morn we buried Melanippus; as the sun set the maiden Basilo died by her own hand, as she could not endure to lay her brother on the pyre and live; and the house beheld a twofold woe, and all Cyrene bowed her head, to see the home of happy children made desolate."

I finished my composition in less than an hour. After I'd gone through it and checked the endings, I washed my face and changed my shirt and went, with my books, over to Bunny's room.

Of the six of us, Bunny and I were the only two who lived on campus, and his house was across the lawn on the opposite end of Commons. He had a room on the ground floor, which I am sure was inconvenient for him since he spent most of his time upstairs in the house kitchen: ironing his pants, rummaging through the refrigerator, leaning out the window in his shirtsleeves to yell at passers-by. When he didn't answer his door I went to look for him there, and I found him sitting in the windowsill in his undershirt, drinking a cup of coffee and leafing through a magazine. I was a little surprised to see the twins there, too: Charles, standing with his left ankle crossed over his right, stirring moodily at his coffee and looking out the window; Camilla-and this surprised me, because Camilla wasn't much of one for domestic tasks-ironing one of Bunny's shirts.

"Oh, hello, old man," said Bunny. "Come on in. Having a little kaffeeklatsch. Yes, women are good for one or two things," he added, when he saw me looking at Camilla and the ironing board, "though, being a gentleman-" he winked broadly-"I don't like to say what the other thing is, mixed company and all. Charles, get him a cup of coffee, would you? No need to wash it, it's clean enough," he said stridently, as Charles got a dirty cup from the drain board and turned on the tap. "Do your prose composition?"

"Yeah."

"Which epigram?"

"Twenty-two."

"Hmn. Sounds like everybody went for the tearjerkers. Charles did that one about the girl who died, and all her friends missed her, and you, Camilla, you picked-"

"Fourteen," said Camilla, without looking up, pressing rather savagely on the collar band with the tip of the iron.

"Hah. I picked one of the racy ones myself. Ever been to France, Richard?"

"No," I said.

"Then you better come with us this summer."

"Us? Who?"

"Henry and me."

I was so taken aback that all I could do was blink at him.

"France?" I said.

"May wee. Two-month tour. A real doozy. Have a look." He tossed me the magazine, which I now saw was a glossy brochure.

I glanced through it. It was a lollapalooza of a tour, all right-a "luxury hotel barge cruise" which began in the Champagne country and then went, via hot air balloon, to Burgundy for more barging, through Beaujolais, to the Riviera and Cannes and Monte Carlo-it was lavishly illustrated, full of brightly colored pictures of gourmet meals, flower-decked barges, happy tourists popping champagne corks and waving from the basket of their balloon at the disgruntled old peasants in the fields below.

"Looks great, doesn't it?" said Bunny.

"Fabulous."

"Rome was all right but actually it was kind of a sinkhole when you get right down to it. Besides, I like to gad about a little more myself. Stay on the move, see a few of the native customs. Just between you and me, I bet Henry's going to have a ball with this."

I bet he will, too, I thought, staring at a picture of a woman holding up a stick of French bread at the camera and grinning like a maniac.

The twins were studiously avoiding my eye, Camilla bent over Bunny's shirt, Charles with his back to me and his elbows on the sideboard, looking out the kitchen window.

"Of course, this balloon thing's great," Bunny said conversationally, "but you know, I've been wondering, where do you go to the bathroom? Off the side or something?"

"Look here, I think this is going to take several minutes," said Camilla abruptly. "It's almost nine. Why don't you go ahead with Richard, Charles. Tell Julian not to wait."

"Well, it's not going to take you that much longer, is it?" said Bunny crossly, craning over to see. "What's the big problem? Where'd you learn how to iron, anyway?"

"I never did. We send our shirts to the laundry."

Charles followed me out the door, a few paces behind. We walked through the hall and down the stairs without a word, but once downstairs he stepped close behind me and, catching my arm, pulled me into an empty card room. In the twenties and thirties, there had been a bridge fad at Hampden; when the enthusiasm faded, the rooms were never subsequently put to any function and no one used them now except for drug deals, or typing, or illicit romantic trysts.

He shut the door. I found myself looking at the ancient card table-inlaid at its four corners with a diamond, a heart, a club and a spade.

"Henry called us," said Charles. He was scratching at the raised edge of the diamond with his thumb, his head studiously down.

"When?"

"Early this morning."

Neither of us said anything for a moment.

"I'm sorry," said Charles, glancing up.

"Sorry for what?"

"Sorry he told you. Sorry for everything. Camilla's all upset."

He seemed calm enough, tired but calm, and his intelligent eyes met mine with a sad, quiet candor. All of a sudden I felt terribly upset. I was fond of Francis and Henry but it was unthinkable that anything should happen to the twins. I thought, with a pang, of how kind they had always been; of how sweet Camilla was in those first awkward weeks and how Charles had always had a way of showing up in my room, or turning to me in a crowd with a tranquil assumption-heartwarming to me-that he and I were particular friends; of walks and car trips and dinners at their house; of their letters-frequently unacknowledged on my part-which had come so faithfully over the long winter months.

From somewhere overhead I heard the shriek and groan of water pipes. We looked at each other.

"What are you going to do?" I said. It seemed the only question I had asked of anyone for the last twenty-four hours, and yet no one had given me a satisfactory answer.

He shrugged, a funny little one-shouldered shrug, a mannerism he and his sister had in common. "Search me," he said wearily. "I guess we should go."

When we got to Julian's office, Henry and Francis were already there. Francis hadn't finished his essay. He was scratching rapidly at the second page, his fingers blue with ink, while Henry proofread the first one, dashing in subscripts and aspirants with his fountain pen.

He didn't look up. "Hello," he said. "Close the door, would you?"

Charles kicked at the door with his foot. "Bad news," he said.

"Very bad?"

"Financially, yes."

Francis swore, in a quick hissing underbreath, without pausing in his work. Henry dashed in a few final marks, then fanned the paper in the air to dry it.

"Well for goodness' sakes," he said mildly. "I hope it can wait. I don't want to have to think about it during class. How's that last page coming, Francis?"

"Just a minute," said Francis, laboriously, his words lagging behind the hurried scrawl of his pen.

Henry stood behind Francis's chair and leaned over his shoulder and began to proofread the top of the last page, one elbow resting on the table. "Camilla's with him?" he said.

"Yes. Ironing his nasty old shirt."

"Hmnn." He pointed at something with the end of his pen. "Francis, you need the optative here instead of the subjunctive."

Francis reached up quickly from his work-he was nearly at the end of the page-to change it.

"And this labial becomes pi, not kappa."

Bunny arrived late, and in a foul temper. "Charles," he snapped, "if you want this sister of yours to ever get a husband, you better teach her how to use an iron." I was exhausted and ill prepared and it was all I could do to keep my mind on the class. I had French at two, but after Greek I went straight back to my room and took a sleeping pill and went to bed. The sleeping pill was an extraneous gesture; I didn't need it, but the mere possibility of restlessness, of an afternoon full of bad dreams and distant plumbing noises, was too unpleasant to even contemplate.

So I slept soundly, more soundly than I should have, and the day slipped easily away. It was almost dark when somewhere, through great depths, I became aware that someone was knocking at my door.

It was Camilla. I must have looked terrible, because she raised an eyebrow and laughed at me. "All you ever do is sleep," she said. "Why is it you're always sleeping when I come to see you?"

I blinked at her. My shades were down and the hall was dark and to me, half-drugged and reeling, she seemed not at all her bright unattainable self but rather a hazy and ineffably tender apparition, all slender wrists and shadows and disordered hair, the Camilla who resided, dim and lovely, in the gloomy boudoir of my dreams.

"Come in," I said.

She did, and closed the door behind her. I sat on the side of the unmade bed, feet bare and collar loose, and thought how wonderful it would be if this really were a dream, if I could walk over to where she sat and put my hands on either side of her face and kiss her, on the eyelids, on the mouth, on the place at her temple where the honey-colored hair graded into silky gold.

We looked at each other for a long time.

"Are you sick?" she said.

The gleam of her gold bracelet in the dark. I swallowed. It was hard to think what to say.

She stood up again. "I'd better go," she said. "I'm sorry to have bothered you. I came to ask if you wanted to go on a drive."

"What?"

"A drive. It's all right, though. Some other time."

"Where?"

"Somewhere. Nowhere. I'm meeting Francis at Commons in ten minutes."

"No, wait," I said. I felt sort of marvelous. A narcotic heaviness still clung deliciously to my limbs and I imagined what fun it would be to wander with her-drowsy, hypnotized-up to Commons in the fading light, the snow.

I stood up-it took forever to do it, the floor receding gradually before my eyes as if I were simply growing taller and taller by some organic process-and walked to my closet. The floor swayed as gently beneath me as the deck of an airship. I found my overcoat, then a scarf. Gloves were too complicated to bother with.

"Okay," I said. "Ready."

She raised an eyebrow. "It's sort of cold out," she said. "Don't you think you should wear some shoes?"

We walked to Commons through slush and cold rain, and when we got there Charles, Francis, and Henry were waiting for us. The configuration struck me as significant, in some way that was not entirely clear, everyone except for Bunny-"What's going on?" I said, blinking at them.

"Nothing," said Henry, tracing a pattern on the floor with the sharp, glinting ferrule of his umbrella. "We're just going for a drive. I thought it might be fun-" he paused delicately-"if we got away from school for a while, maybe had some dinner ..."

Without Bunny, that is the subtext here, I thought. Where was he? The tip of Henry's umbrella glittered. I glanced up and noticed that Francis was looking at me with lifted eyebrows.

"What is it?" I said irritably, swaying slightly in the doorway.

He exhaled with a sharp, amused sound. "Are you drunk?" he said.

They were all looking at me in kind of a funny way. "Yes," I said. It wasn't the truth, but I didn't feel much like explaining.

The chill sky, misty with fine rain near the treetops, made even the familiar landscape around Hampden seem indifferent and remote. The valleys were white with fog and the top of Mount Cataract was entirely obscured, invisible in the cold haze. Not being able to see it, that omniscient mountain which grounded Hampden and its environs in my senses, I found it difficult to get my bearings, and it seemed as if we were heading into strange and unmarked territory, though I had been down this road a hundred times in all weathers. Henry drove, rather fast as he always did, the tires whining on the wet black road and water spraying high on either side.

"I looked at this place about a month ago," he said, slowing as we approached a white farmhouse on a hill, forlorn bales of hay dotting the snowy pasture. "It's still for sale, but I think they want too much."

"How many acres?" said Camilla.

"A hundred and fifty."

"What on earth would you do with that much land?" She raised her hand to clear the hair from her eyes and again I caught the gleam of her bracelet: blown hair is sweet, brown hair over the mouth blown.... "You wouldn't want to farm it, would you?"

"To my way of thinking," Henry said, "the more land the better. I'd love to have so much land that from where I lived I couldn't see a highway or a telephone pole or anything I didn't want to see. I suppose that's impossible, this day and age, and that place is practically on the road. There was another farm I saw, over the line in New York State ..."

A truck shot past in a whine of spray.

Everyone seemed unusually calm and at ease and I thought I knew why. It was because Bunny wasn't with us. They were avoiding that topic with a deliberate unconcern; he must be somewhere now, I thought, doing something, what I didn't want to ask. I leaned back and looked at the silvery, staggering paths the raindrops made as they blew across my window.

"If I bought a house anywhere I'd buy one here," said Camilla. "I've always liked the mountains better than the seashore."