the offences named, yet each of his instructors
felt that it was scarcely possible to put into words the real cause of
the trouble, which lay in a sort of hysterically defiant manner of the
boy's; in the contempt which they all knew he felt for them, and which he
seemingly made not the least effort to conceal. Once, when he had been
making a synopsis of a paragraph at the blackboard, his English teacher
had stepped to his side and attempted to guide his hand. Paul had started
back with a shudder and thrust his hands 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
intent.

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 ordeal, 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 which 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 make to 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 asked him whe