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Lane spots her green book and asks what it is.

She sweats more, and roots through her handbag, bringing out items, to find a tissue. She says she's not, but she's afraid she "will" compete, which is why she quit theatre. She says acting made her feel like an "egomaniac," and that she's sick of ego. She says she quit her play and the theatre department. Lane tells her he's been worried about her the last few weeks and tells her to eat, but when she looks at her sandwich she becomes nauseated. She finds Wally Campbell to be like everyone else, and rails against conformity for a while. He orders frog's legs and snails, then tells her about the plans to go to the game in his friend Wally Campbell's car. She says she's not hungry and wants only a chicken sandwich and a glass of milk, which annoys Lane. She freshens her appearance and walks out of the bathroom looking stunning. She takes out her green book briefly, then returns it to her bag. She sits down in a cramped position and cries for five minutes. In the empty restroom, Franny, perspiring and very pale, enters the furthest stall and locks it. Lane pretends to look "attractively bored" for the benefit of the other restaurant patrons. Though she says she likes them, she maintains she's "sick of liking peopleŠI wish to God I could meet somebody I could respect." Looking pale, she excuses herself to the bathroom. Lane disputes her, but Franny says that poets are supposed to "leave something beautiful" with the reader, and that the ones at her college only get into your head. She says she's tired of people like the section men, or even the famous poets at her college. Franny says he's talking like a "section man" - a graduate student who takes over class when a professor is out, and invariably criticizes and ruins the author the class is studying. Lane dominates the conversation, boasting about his recent "A" paper that criticized French writer Gustave Flaubert.

In Sickler's, a preferred restaurant of the college intellectuals, Franny and Lane drink martinis.

Lane tells her the plan to get lunch, and Franny says she's missed him, though she quickly realizes that this is a lie. She quickly puts it away and they walk out, with Franny making most of the small talk. Franny arrives, and he asks her about the pea-green book she is carrying. He rereads her letter, in which she repeatedly expresses her love for him. The big football game against Yale is this weekend. College-boy Lane Coutell waits for his girlfriend, Franny Glass, to arrive by train.