"The proctor reported me. I had a girl in my room. No, that's slicking it up and making it sound romantic and pretty. What I mean is I had a woman in my room. You know ... a woman."
"I know," said Peter.
"You remember I was low in my mind after the football game. It let me down. I don't care what I wrote you before the game. I really did think it was going to be fine. I thought I'd get stirred by it and after it was all over the only things I remembered were Bill French sitting on the side-lines crying and Charlie Bullitt out on the field putting his lunch. You don't mind if I tell it this way—the long way."
"Take your time."
"Well, I know it sounds silly, but it seemed to me that I just had to go out and find something that was thrilling and beautiful too. I saw this girl—this woman—walking across Harvard Square. It was night and raining and blowing. The wind was almost carrying her along. You know it made her seem so alive."
He paused again. Peter could not resist an impulse to break into the story. "She said to you, 'Come along' or a something like that," he suggested.
"No, I spoke to her. I said, 'Why get wet?' It was dark and we sneaked up the stairs in Weld to my room. And then it wasn't beautiful at all." Pat buried his head in his hands.
This time Peter did put his arm around his shoulders. "That's right," said Peter, "it wasn't beautiful. You couldn't know that. Nobody ever does. I didn't."
Pat looked up and in the second he had snapped back to normal. The shame had gone somewhere; into Peter's protecting arm perhaps. He managed a smile.
"Peter," he said, "there's something more I'm sorry about. I'm sorry for what I said about that football story. It was a good football story. A peach of a story—all but that part about Charlie Bullitt and Dr. Nichols."