The library was hot and full of people. All through the room, Vag could hear pages rustling and chairs creaking, and from the other side of the room, the slow rhythmic breathing of someone who had fallen asleep. Vag sat bunched over his text book with a pencil poised over a clean sheet of paper marked "Reading Notes." He concentrated: ". . . The establishment of a conditioned reflex means the establishment of a functional relation between a stimulus and a response not ordinarily associated with it. . . ."

Vag detached the assignment sheet from his notebook and again added up the number of pages he had to go. It came to 124 more than it had the first time, and that was not counting the reading period assignment. The exam was Friday; this was Wednesday night. Vag shuddered: before his eyes swirled unhappy visions of the tense examination room, stacks of blue-books, the stern-faced proctors; he saw the terse sadistic questions: "Identify . . ." "Discuss and cite examples. . . ." "Elaborate, in essay form . . .", "Write briefly on three of the five. . . .", he felt the panic as the three hours skidded by while he struggled to pump out answers from an empty mind. Vag breathed hard, clutched the book nervously, and wrote "Chapter 10" so hard at the top of his reading notes that he broke the pencil point. He plunged into the reading ". . . The clue to the architecture of the effect or patterns is the dominance relation between the stimulus and the conditioning environment. . . ." Vag reached in his pocket for another pencil to note this down; he didn't understand it, but it sounded like an important point. There were a number of things in his pocket--a handkerchief, some matches, a spoon he had absentmindedly walked off with from supper three days before--there were also two sharp pieces of cardboard which Vag was unable to identify--he brought them out to have a look. They were two rather battered ticket stubs.

And Vag remembered. He had taken her out only a week and a half ago. It seemed centuries. Since then Vag had reviewed the entire Middle Ages, ten plays of Shakespeare, and the whole structure of human personality.

Now, through all the muddled chaos of fact and jargon, buzzing in his head, Vag could see her, hear her warm laughter. The thought suffused the sleety streets of his mind; Vag put the book down on the table and leaned back in the chair gently so as not to disturb the image. He closed his eyes.

Down at the end of the room the library clock began to strike little needles of sound. Vag counted them absentmindedly . . . seven, eight, nine, ten. Ten o'clock. The idea sank in slowly. Suddenly Vag sat bolt upright. How could he have been day-dreaming? The specter of examination welled up in his imagination in all its horror. The smug fat text and the cruel purple type on the assignment sheet seemed to be deriding him with silent mockery. Vag tore the ticket stubs to shreds, clenched his teeth, and read on.