"I'm the Grand Tutor," I told Stoker, and noted crossly that in his company I seemed always defensive, overambitious, and foolish.
"Well, now," Greene said — his expression so fatuous it made me hot with impatience — "maybe you and Him both is Grand Tutors."
I wouldn't acknowledge his remark, though I saw Stoker watching with amusement for my reaction. Greene was twice my age, a wealthy and powerful figure to whom, moreover, I was in a small way obliged, yet I found myself almost contemptuous of him this morning, and not knowing quite how, I felt certain that Stoker was responsible. His presence either made me intolerant or actually transformed Greene's otherwise agreeable simplicity into simple-mindedness — as it seemed to turn my own pride into vanity, and had made Anastasia's martyrdom on the beach into something perverse. I strode off without a word towards the far end of the aisle or track, where a bare-chested group of athletes were loosening their muscles for the Trial; Greene called goodbye to Stoker and hurried after me. Sure enough, my irritation was left behind like a patch of nettles, and once out of that mocking influence Greene's ingenuous good nature seemed again more winning than annoying. He clapped his arm about my shoulder and cheerfully flunked himself for "always saying the wrong durn thing." Then with surprising insight he declared that because he had never met a man he didn't like, and himself craved frankly to be liked by everyone he met, he not infrequently made enemies of his friends by making friends of their enemies — as in the case of Bray and myself.
"So I just don't fret," he said. " 'Like it or lump it,' I say to myself: I'm okay, and what the heck anyhow, it don't nothing matter. Ain't that Stoker a dandy, though?"
I smiled and shook my head; one could not stay annoyed with such insouciance. Greene chattered on about his night's adventure: I was wrong to despise Bray, he declared, who when all was said and done was a darned smart cookie, insightwise. He'd held real person-to-person interviews — in depth, didn't I know — with numerous of Stoker's guests in the Living Room, and all agreed afterwards, when Bray left for WESCAC's Belly, that there was a man who could read the passèd heart of every flunker in the room, and make you feel a little bit brighter than you did before. He, Greene, did not regret for a moment having gone with the crowd to Founder's Hill instead of revisiting the Carnival midway as he'd planned; he felt a campus better for it. Even Dr. Kennard Sear, it seemed, had put by skepticism after his interview and declared that Bray's analytical perceptiveness was extraordinary.
"Then Dr. Sear's isn't," I said. "I'm surprised he couldn't see through him."
Greene chuckled. "Wait'll you have your interview! I told Mr. Bray about you being a Grand Tutor and all, and He said He'd be right proud to have a chat with you. He's one in a million, that fellow. Really opened my eyes."
I judged it futile to argue. Moreover, Greene's admiration of my rival turned out to be at least partly a mere reflection of his real enthusiasm, which now he beamingly confided.
"That Anastasia thinks a lot of you, too, George; I could tell by looking at her! Guess you two are sweet on one another, huh?"
Without mentioning what had passed between us in George's Gorge, Stoker's sidecar, or the Powerhouse Living Room, I declared that I regarded Mrs. Stoker as an uncommonly beautiful human female lady person both physically and otherwise, and was sufficiently impressed by her generous nature to hope that she might be the first I could lead to Commencement Gate, once I'd found it myself. For this reason I naturally thought of her with a particular fondness, as might Max of a prize milch-nanny; as for love, however — which I took his expression to mean — I asserted firmly that a Grand Tutor could no more devote himself to certain Tutees and exclude others than could an algebra professor. My responsibility was for studentdom, as I conceived, not for any particular comely students…
"Then I might as well say it right out," Greene broke in; "I love that woman fit to bust! A sweeter, purer, prettier girl I never hope to see, and I'm bound and determined I'm going to marry her! Soon's I can see my way clear!"
He blushed happily at my astonishment, but his incredible resolve was proof to objection. The girl was already married to Maurice Stoker, I pointed out. Impossible, Greene replied: he could tell just by looking her square in the eyes that she was as virginal as the pines in his farthest timberlot; he doubted she'd even kissed a man yet.
"Are you joking?" I cried. I hadn't time or heart to rehearse for his edification Anastasia's extraordinary sexual accomplishments; I merely pointed out to him that she wore a wedding-ring, called herself Mrs. Maurice Stoker, and had countered Max's vow to free her from the Powerhouse by declaring that she stopped there of her own will, because her husband needed her.
"Then he's got her hypnotized, or doped," Greene said firmly. "But she's still a maiden girl, I can tell by her eyes; and if the marriage ain't consummated it can be annulled." His mind was made up, he declared: his own marriage he regarded now as having been incipiently kerflooey from the outset, and himself a perfectly okay man whose headaches and other difficulties were the effect of his wife's excessive standards, or something, he did not care what. Though he had seen Anastasia but once, and been unable to speak a word to her, the vision of her stainless beauty as she knelt at the Founder's Shaft encouraged him to wipe clean the troubled slate of his past and start anew — a resolve which Mr. Bray had personally seconded.
"Directly this Registration business is done with," he said, "I'm going straight to Miss Virginia R. Hector and ask for Anastasia's hand in marriage. Now, then!"
I was dumbfounded, the more when he capped his madness with a plea that I go with him to see Anastasia's mother, who he understood was herself somewhat kerflooey, on the subject of Grand Tutors. If I would support his cause with her, he promised, he would use every resource at his command to clear Dr. Spielman of the charge against him.
"It's no more'n Miss Stacey'd want her own self," he said, and added that it was in fact only to intercede with Bray on Max's behalf that Anastasia had attended Stoker's Randy-Thursday party in the first place, an affair not otherwise fit for her maiden presence. But she had moved through the bawdy crowd like a swan across a cesspool, he went on, and anon had knelt so sweetly before the Grand Tutor that he, Greene, had been smitten with love upon the instant. So much so that when he'd seen some fellow "go for her" as she knelt, he'd rushed to protect her from molestation, and a little fist-fight had ensued.
"Young Nikolayan fellow, that I thought was going to lay his durn Founderless hands on her! Had a black patch over one eye to start with, and I blacked the other one for him!" But not, he admitted with a chuckle, before he'd nearly got a shiner himself. Stoker's guards had separated them, lest a varsity incident be made of it; the Nikolayan visitor (whom I believed I remembered seeing through the metal curtain in the Control Room) had been quickly escorted back to his classmates on the other side of the Powerhouse. Anastasia then had retired with Hedwig Sear; Harold Bray went off to fulfill his pledge in WESCAC's Belly; and Peter Greene, provided with aspirins and cold compresses by his host, stayed on to the party's end — but so full of the image of Anastasia, he could scarcely attend the naughty entertainments that climaxed the night. And obliged as he felt to Maurice Stoker for the hospitality and the free ride back to Great Mall, he hoped with my assistance to have the unconsummated match annulled and make Anastasia his virgin bride.