Leonardo Da Vinci asserted that the human eye not only received, but gave forth rays of light; Hector’s eye, at any time before he fell in love with Griselda, might have served as a proof of this theory. But now it was dulled. In the late springtime, when he should have been deep in that exhaustive revision of the year’s work which was so much a feature of his teaching, he would spend as long as five minutes at a time staring out of the window, twiddling the cord of the blind, while his pupils wondered what had come over him. His particular brand of classroom humour no longer held any charm for him. There had been a time when, during such a spring revision, he had sent two or three of the more backward pupils to the blackboard every day, to work out problems under his direct gaze; as they blundered, he had goaded them, not angrily, with a mingling of humour, pity and a little contempt. If it is true, as is so often asserted, that the greatest humour is near to pathos, Hector qualified on these occasions as a great humorist: although few of the stupid ones learned much about mathematics during these ordeals, some of them learned lessons of fortitude which were invaluable to them in later life. But this spring all the ardour of the born teacher was gone from him. He was like a sick man, but his pupils did not guess the cause of his sickness.

Spring had been his chief season for detentions. Every afternoon he had collected a group of boys and girls in his classroom after school was over, in order to make sure that they finished the work which they had not done during the lesson period. But this spring he was noticeably ill at ease for the last hour of the school day, and left as soon as the last bell had rung. He made his way at once to St Agnes’ and if no rehearsal was called he would do little jobs for Larry Pye, or measure the area which had been set aside for seats, or do something to make it decent for him to linger there. Rehearsals usually began at five o’clock and ended at eight, when the light began to fail; Hector was the first to come and the last to go.

He had, in the course of a few weeks, learned much about himself. He had learned that he had no talent as a joker. But then, he was comforted to notice, Griselda did not seem to care for jokes, and never smiled at Shortreed’s finest strokes, though she often laughed at young Bridgetower’s nonsense, which meant nothing to Hector. He learned that his youth was gone, and that his attempts to dress youthfully made him ridiculous. Larry Pye, who was over fifty, could wear anything he liked, including very old Army shorts, and no one laughed; but when Hector wore a sports shirt he felt naked and looked foolish. He had learned that it was possible for him to throw himself in Griselda’s way constantly, without her taking any notice of him. She, who had smiled so meaningly at him, did not even heed his presence now. And yet when it was necessary to the action of the play that she, as Ariel, should sing softly into his ear as he pretended to be asleep, he knew that his face reddened, that his breathing was hard and that the blood beat in his ears and eyes; he thought “I love you, I love you,” as she knelt by him, and was hurt and dismayed that in some way the message was not plain to her. Wild schemes, as they appeared to him, kept coming into his mind by which he would make his love known. He would write a letter—but he knew his limitations as a writer. He would ask to see her privately some evening, ask for an hour uninterrupted; but would he be able to speak? No, he could not face such an ordeal; the old gods of planning and common sense had deserted him. He would wait until some lucky chance brought them together, and then, on the spur of the moment, he would speak. But chance never did bring them together. He did not know what to do.

His love for Griselda had undergone a change which frightened him. When he had awakened that morning, sure that he loved her, he had enjoyed the happiness of the sensation. For perhaps a week he had thought of his attachment chiefly as an appurtenance to himself. In his little mental drama he was the principal figure, and Griselda was a supporting player. But as time wore on the emphasis shifted, and Griselda became the chief person of the drama, and he was a minor character, a mere bit player, aching for a scene with her. For the first time in his life Hector discovered that it was possible for someone to be more important to him than himself.

He had no need now to look ruefully at the item in his Plan of Conduct which urged him to give up pie. His appetite waned, and his accustomed waitress at the Snak Shak commented on it. He did not lose any of his bulk, but he looked puffy and distressed. One day he tore the Plan of Conduct out of his book and burned it; it seemed to him to be stupid and worthless, an insult to what he felt. Indeed his whole concept of life as something which could be governed by schemes in pocketbooks appeared to him suddenly to be trivial and contemptible.

He wanted to talk to somebody about his love, but he knew no one to whom he could even hint of such a thing. He engaged Mr Adams in conversation about The Tempest, and led up to the character of Ariel. “I think you’ll like that in our production,” said he; “we have a very clever girl playing Ariel, a Miss Webster.”

“She’ll have to be clever,” said Adams; “Shakespeare wrote that part for a boy, and it’s always a mistake to cast a woman for it. I don’t know that I care to see some great lolloping girl attempt it.” This last remark was pure spite, and Adams did not really know why he made it. But there is a spirit of Malignance which makes people say offensive things to lovers about those they love, even when that love is hidden, and Mr Adams was, for the moment, the instrument of it. Hector was wounded, but he could say nothing, for fear of revealing what might, he knew, bring him into derision.

Sexual desire played no conscious part in what he felt for Griselda. Indeed, it had never entered his life since that incident at the Normal School Conversazione. He did not long to possess her physically; he wanted to dominate her mentally. He wanted her to think of him as he thought of her, as of someone who stood high above and apart from the rest of mankind. He wanted to defend her from dangers; he wanted to bring her great gifts of courage and wisdom; he wanted to take her from the world and keep her to himself, and to know that she was blissfully happy to renounce the world for him. He thought that once he had declared his love, she might permit him to kiss her, but his imagination shrank quickly from that kiss; it would, he was sure, be a thing of such pain and joy that it might rob him of his senses. He had never, in all his forty years, kissed any woman but his mother.

Nevertheless, he was strongly conscious that Griselda was a woman, and was subject to the disabilities which he believed to be a special and unjust burden to her sex. When, at rehearsals, she seemed to be a little out of sorts, or flung herself on the grass to rest, or wore the look of weary beauty which had worked so powerfully upon Solly at the casting meeting, Hector grieved that she might be in the throes of those “illnesses peculiar to women” of which, as a boy, he had read in patent medicine almanacs. Thinking this, he could become quite maudlin on her account, and once remarked to the astonished Mr Leakey, out of the blue, that woman had a great deal to bear which men could only guess at.

If only he could tell someone about his love! The urge to talk about it was mastered, but only just, by his fear of making himself foolish, or of destroying the magic of his feelings by giving them a voice. Once he thought seriously of seeking an interview with Mr Webster, and telling that gentleman that he, Hector, loved his daughter and wanted her father’s consent to seek her hand. This was, he realized, no longer the custom, but what he felt for Griselda demanded the fullest measure of formality. Besides, he was nearer in age to Mr Webster than to his daughter; an older man, and the father of such a girl, would surely understand the frankness and nobility which prompted such an action. Fortunately better sense prevailed, and Mr Webster was spared an interview which he would have found embarrassing and depressing.