“Ladies first,” said I, nodding toward Scrap.

She was furious. “There you go,” she squeaked, “hoping to disarm me with old-world courtesy. I won’t go first. You won’t get a word out of me.” But then she rushed onward with an extraordinary torrent of speech in which I could only catch a few phrases like “minority group antagonism,” “insensitive to cultural mood,” “oppression as an institutionalized social function,” “dynamics of victimization,” and the like. Coming from one who was supposed not to be speaking at all it took rather a long time, and the Bull grew impatient, pawed the ground and tossed his great head. At last he was so angry that flame—yes, flame—burst from his nostrils. Scrap, so highly inflammable, was in serious danger.

Seemingly, she knew no fear. If I had not seen it with my own eyes I would not have believed what happened next. Scrap, with a furious gesture, tore from the area of her bosom a strip of newsprint, and held it in the flame, in which it was immediately consumed. But not before I saw what was printed on it. It was a lingerie advertisement, and it bore a nicely drawn depiction of a brassiere.

“Defiance!” she shrieked. “That is the ultimate act of feminine defiance! Match it, if you can!”

The Bull laughed a deep taurine laugh. “Typical feminine argument,” said he; “you refuse to be considered as a sexual object, and yet you underline your refusal with a flagrantly sexual gesture. Is that your muddle-headed way of saying that you place no value on your sex?”

“I’ll tell you what the value of my sex is,” snarled Scrap. “Its value has been established by Xaviera Hollander, the Happy Hooker herself, and it’s five hundred dollars a shot.”

I was dismayed by this indelicacy, and the ease with which she had fallen into the trap. The Bull sneered. He drew a paper from his breast pocket and laid it on the desk in front of me. “I offer this as evidence in contradiction,” said he; “this is the present male rate.” I looked at the card and blenched. It contained some intimate information about the erotic tariff of the celebrated racehorse Secretariat. I must say it made Xaviera Hollander look like cheap goods. But my sense of propriety was outraged.

“I refuse to listen to argument on this coarse level,” said I. “Whatever arrangements you two wish to make in privacy, as Consenting Spectres, is nobody’s business but your own, but I will have no part in it. This argument must continue, if at all, on a level of decency.”

“Very well,” said the Bull. “Allow me to remind everyone present that only a month ago a Princess of the Realm, surely an example to all young women, took a public vow to OBEY the man who became her husband. And several young men in this College got up at five o’clock in the morning to hear her do it.”

This time it was Scrap who laughed, and it was immediately clear that laughter was something the Bull had not expected. He glared angrily, but he was confused, and Scrap took shrewd advantage of his confusion.

“Are you so besotted with male vanity you don’t know what the Princess had in mind?” said she. “Must I show you what feminine obedience means?”

From the mass of paper of which she was composed, Scrap produced a sheet printed entirely in red, and she began to trail it, slowly and provocatively in front of the Bull. I could hardly believe what followed. As if hypnotised, its great head began to roll to left and right, as it followed this transfixing red cloak, which gave out the characteristic feminine rustle that I had noticed before.

“Let’s see who does the obeying now,” whispered Scrap.

O for the pen of an Ernest Hemingway, that I might adequately describe for you the spectacle of art and brutality that followed! Scrap was all femininity as she glided, not rapidly but with splendid grace, around the ring of our Round Room. As she moved she murmured in a low, compelling, unbearably taunting voice, “Ah, toro, toro! Here—here to me, toro! Aha! Toro! Toro!” And the Bull, unable to help himself, responded to every word and gesture.

Do you know our Round Room? There are twenty-two tall black chairs in it, and on the back of every chair is stamped, in gold, the head of a bull. As Scrap led her victim in his fated dance, I saw that the forty-four eyes of those bulls followed every move: their forty-four nostrils stirred with growing apprehension, and I thought I saw the frothy spittle of fear dripping from their twenty-two tongues.

What was I to do? Where did my sympathies lie? I was, if you will pardon the bluntness of my speech, a quivering ganglion of irreconcilable emotions. I ought to stop the fight. I ought to help the Bull, who was as surely doomed as any bull I have ever seen in a ring. But the skill shown by Scrap thrilled me. Without knowing how it happened, I found myself standing on my desk cheering. I even snatched the rose from my buttonhole and threw it into the ring.

The fight did not last long, but it was splendid while it lasted. More and more furiously the Bull responded to the taunts of Scrap, whose elegance as a matador was beautiful to behold. Her veronicas, her amontillados, her tournedos bonne femme were as fine as anything I have ever seen, in the great corridas of Madrid. But all the time I wondered: How is she going to finish him off? She has no weapon, except that which she had pretended to hold in contempt—her feminine fascination, her charm.

As I have said, the light was ghost-light, and I have but mortal eyes. Suddenly there was a crash and the Bull was down; he had stepped on the rose I had thrown, slipped, and cracked his great head on the corner of one of our curved tables. I was cheering wildly.

But to my astonishment, Scrap was weeping. She stumbled blindly about the Round Room, looking for a corner in which to hide her head; on the floor lay the Bull, apparently dead. I thought he looked rather noble in death—until he winked at me. I had no time for reflection, because Scrap was pulling at my sleeve.

“Call me a trash-bin,” she sobbed, “and let me get away from here.”

“But you’ve won,” said I. “I presume you mean to take over the College. Isn’t that what all this was about?”

“I didn’t mean to kill him,” sobbed Scrap. “I only meant to teach him a lesson. What shall I do without him?”

There are certain advantages in being no longer young. One sees a little more clearly, even without one’s glasses. “Leave everything to me,” said I. “And you really mustn’t go away. I think you’ll like it here. And I think we’re going to like you. Now let me put you in a nice restful place to think it all over until next September.”

And, with gallantry which Scrap did not now refuse, I gave her my arm and led her through the labyrinths of the lower part of the College, and there I put her in a very comfortable part of the Library to rest. I took care that she did not see what was printed on the door behind which I locked her, but I don’t mind telling you. It said Printed Ephemera.

Then I hastened back to the Round Room to render first aid to the Bull. I knew that he had simply knocked his head against a reality but I thought his self-esteem might need some delicate attention.

He had gone. The Ugly Spectre of Sexism was lurking at Massey College no longer. And as I walked out into the quad I saw that he was back in his accustomed place over the gate, and I noticed, as you may notice if you choose, that, noble as he looks, and invincible as he looks, he has an undoubted black eye. But with his right eye he winked again. And I observed that he was wearing his huge single earring with a new jauntiness as though he had discovered, in his brief encounter with Scrap, the truth that in the most redoubtably masculine creature there lurks some strain of the feminine.

All seemed peace in the College as I walked again in the quad. Even the music from the dance was peaceful, for the band was playing a Golden Oldie, You’re the Cream in my Coffee