You catch up, but you're more confused.

With a few quick strides you catch up to the English teacher and walk beside her, trotting down the staircase together. She gives you a sidelong glance but says nothing, the same enigmatic smile on her face that she had before.

"What was all that about remembering and comparing?" you ask. She tosses her head, flicking her hair back and smiling at you, her eyes twinkling.

"Why Mr. Watts, that is just literary allusion, one of the consequences of my profession. We teach the subtleties of English literature, and after a time our speech becomes laden with obliques and undertones. You will have to forgive me, it is a habit of long standing, and I'm afraid an unbreakable one."

"But allusions are hints, if I remember correctly. So what were you hinting?"

"Memory is a tricky thing Brian, sometimes clear as crystal, other times as unreliable as mist on the grass. Have you seen Rashomon sir? The Kurosawa film and very fine work of art indeed. I commend it to you. It has much to say about viewpoints and memory."

"You get more difficult to understand with each sentence you speak," you say with a smile, feeling completely out of your depth in this conversation. "I feel like I'm missing something important."

"We are all missing something important. It is the price of the human condition. One often does not see what one has missed until the opportunity has passed; or having seized one opportunity, failed to recognise its full potential. A great deal of literature is centred on this fact."

"And what am I missing?"

"Enigma, Mr. Watts, is not only central to literature, it is one of the defining charms of a woman," she says with a grin that isn't quite flirtatious. "Once something becomes obvious, it loses much of its appeal. I'll leave you to consider that, I have an appointment with the headmistress." She touches your arm in farewell and turns away with a twinkling smile, leaving you completely bemused.