When questioned by the Principal as to why he was there, Paul stated, politely enough, that he wanted to come back to school.  This was a lie, but Paul was quite accustomed to lying; found it, indeed, indispensable for overcoming friction.  His teachers were asked to state their respective charges against him, which they did with such a rancour and aggrievedness as evinced that this was not a usual case.  Disorder and impertinence were among 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 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 like a repetition of the scandalous red carnation.