She smiled across the table at him and told him that her name was Violet: and she ate a dollar and sixty cents' worth of tit-bits. And Jack then understood why under paid instructors and economic seniors avoided such nice little cafes. He couldn't eat a thing himself after he had looked into her eyes and felt the glow of her smile: and he felt emptier still when the waiter presented him the bill.

But he smiled and paid it like more money was the least of his worries. He and Violet left the cafe and sauntered down the lazy, tree-shaded college lane, and the first thing they knew, they were holding hands in the darkened mezzanine of the University Circle Theatre. The picture was Southern romance, and the warm intimate darkness of the interior seemed to draw them together. They stole a precious, fleeting kiss in the darkness that marked the end of the feature picture, and a subtle understanding was created between them.

When they left the theatre the gentle gray of twilight had descended upon the land leaving a faint touch of rose in the Western sky. Jack knew that he had lost his job in the bookstore where he worked as a clerk in the afternoons, but he didn't care. He was drunk, they were both drunk, with youth and understanding and the mellow wine of first love. They walked the streets 'til late that night: and he whispered in her ear those things that lovers have whispered since time immemorial: and they looked at the moon and dreamed: and she stored way in that deep fastness of her woman's heart his stammered love words?so meaningless, so worthless to the rest of the world?but to her, they were priceless.

Jack awoke the next morning to a world of realities, and things such as money and jobs once more attained their right importance. He realized that he was very poor and that a job was vital to the continuance of his education; and what was more important than that, the continuation of his relationship with Violet. But jobs were very scarce that year, even such jobs as clerking in bookstores.