You don't hear from Ben again until January, when he sends you a copy of Emerson's Poems from Worcester, with a long, impassioned letter, and a short note reading:

If I live, I will go to Amherst—if I die, I certainly will.

In the letter, you read that Ben has planned a clandestine journey back to Amherst for Valentine's Day, and would like you to meet him beneath your special tree. He asks you to send a letter with your answer at your earliest convenience. You smile as you remember the many afternoons spent beneath that tree last summer with your dear tutor, discussing modern literature and your mutual distaste for orthodoxy.

You push Ben's letter and the Valentine's Day poem you are writing for Eldridge aside and give yourself until the end of Poems to decide what to do about Valentine's Day. But several days later, having reveled in those immortal poems, with their ingenious rhyme and meter, you feel no closer to a decision. You wonder what Susan Gilbert would do, if she were you.

If you meet Ben beneath the tree, turn to page 20.

If you decline Ben's invitation and deliver the valentine to Eldridge instead, turn to page 30.