Alice Munros Best

because she had to tell somebody; it was so odd. She was not prepared at all for his response. His long neck and face turned red, the flush entirely absorbing a birthmark down the side of his cheek. He was thin and fair. He stood up without any thought for the book in his lap or the papers in front of him. The book thumped on the floor. A great sheaf of papers, pushed across the desk, upset his ink bottle.
    “How vile,” he said.
    “Grab the ink,” Rose said. He leaned to catch the bottle and knocked it onto the floor. Fortunately the top was on, and it did not break.
    “Did he hurt you?”
    “No, not really.”
    “Come on upstairs. We’ll report it.”
    “Oh, no.”
    “He can’t get away with that. It shouldn’t be allowed.”
    “There isn’t anybody to report to,” Rose said with relief. “The librarian goes off at noon on Saturdays.”
    “It’s disgusting,” he said in a high-pitched, excitable voice. Rose was sorry now that she had told him anything, and said she had to get back to work.
    “Are you really all right?”
    “Oh, yes.”
    “I’ll be right here. Just call me if he comes back.”
    That was Patrick. If she had been trying to make him fall in love with her, there was no better way she could have chosen. He had many chivalric notions, which he pretended to mock, by saying certain words and phrases as if in quotation marks. “The fair sex,” he would say, and “damsel in distress.” Coming to his carrel with that story, Rose had turned herself into a damsel in distress. The pretended irony would not fool anybody; it was clear that he did wish to operate in a world of knights and ladies; outrages; devotions.
    She continued to see him in the library, every Saturday, and often she met him walking across the campus or in the cafeteria. He made a point of greeting her with courtesy and concern, saying, “How are you?” in a waythat suggested she might have suffered a further attack, or might still be recovering from the first one. He always flushed deeply when he saw her, and she thought that this was because the memory of what she had told him so embarrassed him. Later she found out it was because he was in love.
    He discovered her name, and where she lived. He phoned her at Dr. Henshawe’s house and asked her to go to the movies. At first when he said, “This is Patrick Blatchford speaking,” Rose could not think who it was, but after a moment she recognized the high, rather aggrieved and tremulous voice. She said she would go. This was partly because Dr. Henshawe was always saying she was glad Rose did not waste her time running around with boys.
    Rather soon after she started to go out with him, she said to Patrick, “Wouldn’t it be funny if it was you who grabbed my leg that day in the library?”
    He did not think it would be funny. He was horrified that she would think such a thing.
    She said she was only joking. She said she meant that it would be a good twist in a story, maybe a Maugham story, or a Hitchcock movie. They had just been to see a Hitchcock movie.
    “You know, if Hitchcock made a movie out of something like that, you could be a wild insatiable leg-grabber with one half of your personality, and the other half could be a timid scholar.”
    He didn’t like that either.
    “Is that how I seem to you, a timid scholar?” It seemed to her he deepened his voice, introduced a few growling notes, drew in his chin, as if for a joke. But he seldom joked with her; he didn’t think joking was suitable when you were in love.
    “I didn’t say you were a timid scholar or a leg-grabber. It was just an idea.”
    After a while he said, “I suppose I don’t seem very manly.”
    She was startled and irritated by such an exposure. He took such chances; had nothing ever taught him not to take such chances? But maybe he didn’t, after all. He knew she would have to say something reassuring. Though she was hoping not to, she longed to say judiciously, “Well, no. You don’t.”
    But that would not actually be true. He did seem masculine to her. Because he took those chances. Only a man could be so careless and demanding.
    “We come from two different worlds,” she said to him, on another occasion. She felt like a character in a play, saying that. “My people are poor people. You would think the place I lived in was a dump.”
    Now she was the one who was being dishonest, pretending to throw herself on his mercy, for of course she did not expect him to say, “Oh,