ds violently behind
him. The astonished woman could scarcely have been more hurt and
embarrassed had he struck at her. The insult was so involuntary and
definitely personal as to be unforgettable. In one way and another he
had made all his teachers, men and women alike, conscious of the same
feeling of physical aversion. In one class he habitually sat with his
hand shading his eyes; in another he always looked out of the window
during the recitation; in another he made a running commentary on the
lecture, with humorous intention.

His teachers felt this afternoon that his whole attitude was symbolized
by his shrug and his flippantly red carnation flower, and they fell
upon him without mercy, his English teacher leading the pack. He stood
through it smiling, his pale lips parted over his white teeth. (His lips
were continually twitching, and he had a habit of raising his eyebrows
that was contemptuous and irritating to the last degree.) Older boys
than Paul had broken down and shed tears under that baptism of fire, but
his set smile did not once desert him, and his only sign of discomfort
was the nervous trembling of the fingers that toyed with the buttons of
his overcoat, and an occasional jerking of the other hand that held his
hat. Paul was always smiling, always glancing about him, seeming to feel
that people might be watching him and trying to detect something.
This conscious expression, since it was as far as possible from boyish
mirthfulness, was usually attributed to insolence or "smartness."

As the inquisition proceeded one of his instructors repeated an
impertinent remark of the boy's, and the Principal asked him whether he
thought that a courteous speech to have made a woman. Paul shrugged his
shoulders slightly and his eyebrows twitched.

"I don't know," he replied. "I didn't mean to be polite or impolite,
either. I guess it's a sort of way I have of saying things regardless."

The Principal, who was a sympathetic man, asked him whether he didn't
think that a way it would be well to get rid of. Paul grinned and said
he guessed so. When he was told that he could go he bowed gracefully and
went out. His bow was but a repetition of the scandalous red carnation.

His teachers were in despair, and his drawing master voiced the feeling
of them all when he declared there was something about the boy which
none of them understood. He added: "I don't really believe that smile of
his comes altogether from insolence