Parti: Paul in Pittsburgh

The story begins with Paul's faculty hearing one week after he has been suspended from school. Paul is smiling, and his accusers find his appearance—especially the red carnation in his lapel— "not properly significant of the contrite spirit befitting a boy under the ban of suspension." The teachers, full of ill will, list disorder and impertinence as two of the charges against him, but they feel it "scarcely possible to put into words the real cause of the trouble."

Paul is described as "suave," having eyes with "a certain hysterical brilliancy," shuddering from a teacher's casual touch, and having a "contemptuous and irritating" habit of raising his eyebrows. Only his drawing master hints afterward that Paul's behavior may not be what it appears, that perhaps his teachers do not understand the boy. At this point, the teachers share a feeling of dissatisfaction with...