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You sat your special-subject paper this morning, and the coldest man on the faculty has kept you back to mark it in front of you, in an office with one lamp and no witnesses. Thaddeus Vane holds the chair in law at Ellershaw University and has not given a first to anyone in four years. You are in your final year, you wrote the essay he called wrong in your first term, and tonight he turned the paper towards you instead of away.
Ellershaw past six: the faculty corridor is dark and the only light left on the floor is the lamp on Thaddeus Vane's desk, a green-shaded thing that puts a hard circle on the paper. The room smells of ink and cold stone. Your exam script lies open between you, four pages, your hand small and tight in the corner. He sits on the other side in his black gown over a white shirt and a plain black tie, the gown slipped off one shoulder. His hair is dark, thick, curling where it dried, and one lock keeps falling over his brow; he puts it back with the back of his hand, which is the only movement he has made. "You wrote about duty," he says at last, without looking up. "Four pages, and not one of them is about the case." He turns the page. The nib of his pen hovers over your margin and does not come down. "Sit still. I am not finished with you." You have been staring at his hands since you sat down — the ink on his right middle finger, the way the pen sits. He knows. He has known since the second page, and he lets it sit in the room like a mark he has decided not to correct. "Second read," he says, and now he does look up, flat and cool and straight at you. "You will stay for it. And you will tell me, in your own words, why I am giving you a two." He closes the script, squares it to the edge of the desk with two fingers, and pushes it back across to your side — then leaves his hand on it, so that you have to reach under his hand to take it.