Candy Read Free

leg—though, of course, she did not see it as that, but as the great, expressive hand of the Master—the hand she had seen so often raised from the podium in the beautiful extolling gestures to human worth and dignity, which did, of course, include her; and she was very ashamed of having shuddered. Professor Mephesto gave her knee a little squeeze before withdrawing his hand.
    “It’s an ‘A’ paper, my dear, an ‘ A- plus’ paper. Absolutely top-drawer!”
    Candy’s heart gave a little leap. It was certainly a well-known fact that Professor Mephesto never allowed more than one “A-plus” paper to his entire class for any particular thesis.
    “Thank you,” she managed to breathe.
    “I’ve no doubt,” said Professor Mephesto gently, rising from his chair again, “that you are sincere.” He frowned before continuing. “There are so many who profess noble beliefs and insights, without really feeling them.”
    He walked about the office as he spoke, pausing here and there to touch, in reverence, a book, or to raise a hand to emphasize his meaning.
    “Very few people are capable of feeling things today—I suppose it is our commercial way of life; it has destroyed the capacity to feel . . . the art to feel—for it requires an artist . . . to truly feel. Yet talk is cheap. And that is, of course, what accounts for the pathetic failure of organized religion . . . the mere lip-service to the eternal values. Insincerity! A greater disservice to humankind could not be imagined!”
    He stopped near the back of Candy’s chair, where the girl sat, quite stiffly, staring ahead; she recalled seeing him with the other students, how relaxed and informal they had seemed together, and she made a tremendous effort to emulate their behavior by leaning back now in her chair and having another sip of the sherry, her mind meanwhile racing desperately through the pages she had read this term, trying to find something smart and appropriate to say. She could think of nothing however, for her mind was filled with the recurrent thought, A truly great man. I’m in the presence of a truly great man. And, as she heard behind her now the heavy breathing of the professor, she imagined that the sounds were just the same as those of a man in a story of long ago, after he had carried his burden up Calvary Hill. And she managed to subdue her impulse to flinch this time, when the professor laid his hand on her shoulder, and moved it then to the back of her neck.
    “I really believe,” he said gently, “that you have the . . . true insight, the true wisdom, the true feeling” pausing before he added . . . in a whisper, “. . . and I believe you know my great need of you!”
    As he spoke he gradually slipped his hand around her neck, along her throat and toward her breast, and Candy dropped her glass of sherry.
    “Oh, my goodness,” she wailed, going forward at once from her chair to pick the pieces off the floor, for the glass had broken and scattered. She was so embarrassed she could scarcely speak for the moment.
    “Oh, I’m sorry, I—”
    “Never mind about that,” said Professor Mephesto huskily, coming down beside her, “it’s nothing, only a material object—the merest chimera of existence!”
    On the floor next to her, he put his face to the back of her neck and one hand under her sweater.
    “You won’t deny me,” he pleaded, “I know you are too wise and too good to be selfish. . . . Surely you meant what you wrote.” And he began to quote urgently “‘. . . the beautiful, thrilling privilege of giving fully,’” meanwhile pressing forward against her. But as he did, Candy sprang to her feet again and the professor lost his balance and fell sideways, rolling in the spilled sherry, trying to soften his fall with one hand and to pull the girl down with the other, but he failed in both these efforts; and now, having taken a nasty bump in the fall and, perhaps too, because of his unwieldy bulk, he merely lay for the