Afterward, my professor said in my ear: he’s a serious scholar; but he works a lot, he’s getting old, bored. And he added: if you had been male, or ugly, or old, he would have expected you to come to him and offer the proper homage, and then would have dismissed you with some coldly courteous phrase. This seemed to me spiteful. When he made malicious allusions to the hypothesis that Hardy would certainly renew his pursuit that evening I murmured: maybe he’s really interested in my contribution. He didn’t answer, then said yes, and made no comments when I said, beside myself with joy, that Professor Hardy had invited me to sit at his table at dinner.

I dined with Hardy; I was clever and confident, I drank a lot. Afterward we took a long walk and on the way back, it was two o’clock, he asked me to come to his room. He did it with wit and tact, in an undertone, and I accepted. I had always considered sex an ultimate sticky reality, the least mediated contact possible with another body. Instead, after that experience, I was convinced that sex is an extreme product of the imagination. The greater the pleasure, the more the other is only a dream, a nocturnal reaction of belly, breasts, mouth, anus—of every isolated inch of skin—to the caresses and thrusts of a vague entity definable according to the necessities of the moment. God knows what I put into that encounter, and it seemed to me that I had always loved that man—even though I had just met him—and desired no other but him.