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behind the San he comes around to open her door . . . You can return it any time what day is it today well perhaps I’ll run into you before Thursday . . . hands on her shoulders . . . You shouldn’t be homesick you’re sure you’re alright perhaps we should have left you in bed . . . searchingly as if—
    Are you going to kiss me again.
    He drops his hands. The white snow and scar. Behind him the school rises up through the weather. Monstead, their castle. His eyes his scar jumping or is it the snow falling between them. Why does he always look at her. What? In his eyes what?
    You get some sleep . . . then he turns, slamming into his woolly car so, before she realizes, it is just her and the snow.

11
    DONG Morning assembly in the great hall waiting for masters black capes open like crows eyes still slow still DONG puffy from sleep to file past the statues mustached Giles Dupré Raynes founder in bronze Apollo a broken Cromwell and Queen Victoria that one just a bust DONG up the aisle between the rows of students standing in carved pews to the first row DONG the row of velvet Simon Puck goggling his eyes fingers reading his scalp for scabs. Morning light through the stained glass plays on her hand. A yellow circle in the design appears to be a fried egg but is in fact a sun.
    Headmaster stands to lead the prayer.
    The light stipples Gilbert’s bowed head. If no one ever visits clearly the paintings are hidden from himself.
    Oh God we have heard with our ears
    Yesterday, after the nurse took Catrine’s temperature and informed her that there was hardly time for playacting, what with students who were actually sick, what with winter coming on, she was sent to Tea.
    Our fathers have declared unto us
    Taking her tray, she received the benediction, pink meat pie wedge, hard-boiled egg staring from its center, noble
    noble works that thou did
    There were no empty chairs
    in the old time
    near Sophie or anyone so she had to sit with first years. The younger girls wanted to know about America and she told them. Lies until Brickie passed by on his way to the bread giving her a look that made her go quiet.
    World with . . . damn . . . As it was in the beginning
    She doesn’t try to locate the back of Gilbert’s head but it seems to float wherever she looks.
    World with . . . damn . . . Is now and ever shall be
    Gilbert
    World without end.
    Headmaster stands . . . You may sit . . . patch over his one eye, three black strings plastered across his globe . . . Later this week we will be lucky enough to hear excerpts from Mr. Spenning’s travels in Borneo.
    Father on the telephone, Good news But we will continue this morning with Dr. Thorpe’s insights Extremely good news On Man’s rise from the innocence of brutehood. Man sold their house in Maine. They were to find a new one over the Christmas holidays. Questions of morality arise in A new house where Alternatives are offered of better lives. Did they need a house did they need. Understanding the distinctions between good and evil. What about Conscience. What about Hopes of spiritual ascendance. What about in Maine the day the movers came. Finding that bird’s nest with Mother’s hair wound in the twigs. No chance of finding something like that in any new house.
    It is only after ages fraught with despair . . . Dr. Thorpe mimes despair . . . Hopelessness and grinding . . . his teeth . . . Misery that. Moral law becomes dominant. So
Ariise
. . . Thorpe trills . . .
Ariise
from a bestial to a moral plane of existence.
    Across the courtyard with Sophie and Ness. Sophie singing Boring boring boring laddering a scale the sun coloring everything sharply the morning—
    Yank . . . he moves in bestial, thin, the height of a man.
    They have reached the door to School House. So close. One step up through the heavy oak door four steps down the short corridor to History. Sophie stops singing thunder rattles in the distance voices halt across the tennis courts pupils stop to watch clouds