Cassandra asked for admission to the literature club of the university and was warmly welcomed by everybody. We liked newcomers. We liked to believe that we were expanding and it meant joy to have a new companion who shared our sophisticated passion.
Cassandra was a pale faced, pretty girl. She had long, brown hair, a little bit Jewish looking face with a characteristic, noble shaped nose, but I could only suspect this, for she never talked about her back-ground. Her big intelligent eyes made a disturbingly brisk, even too clever impression, and any time she started to explain something, they jumped out of her face, mesmerising her listeners. This might have been the cause, as I believed, that she was favoured in most of our discussions. Her presence often created an austere atmosphere within the group. She had some wild air around her that revealed hard-ships in her circumstances or past experiences, but she was the youngest in the group, she could have become the pet of the club with time, if she had been more patient, or had had more faith in herself.
The boys were very pleased with her, especially one of them. Chris studied at the Faculty of Medicine, his main interests were science and new technologies, not literature, but he enjoyed our group meetings. I always thought that he only joined us on a holiday-basis. He must have found compelling, the irresponsible play we often experience in the company of artists and bohemians. We provided a safe environment for him, in which his first romantic attempts at writing poetry were respected and not laughed at...