In 1965, a few months before graduation, a man from the Job Corps penetrated to the upper floors of Main, the building at Vassar College where the seniors lived, a presumably impregnable niche. There he found corridors lined with astonished women who were more than willing to go teach remedial English, math, and social studies to high school dropouts: tender long-legged birds bred to serve, stuffed with good intentions and an amazing amount of useless knowledge, eager to fly the coop.

"Lambs to the slaughter," Diana teased her friend Eleanor. Diana was engaged to a student at Yale Law School and had been accepted as a graduate student in Art History. Her future was assured, but for a moment she felt inadequate, even wrong, because Eleanor, who had no plans at all, had graciously accepted the kind invitation of the man from the Job Corps.

To Diana's eyes, it was all too typical that Eleanor would fall for this offer. She was forever going off on blind dates with boys who managed to break her heart within six hours, or crying her eyes out over somebody's brother at Hamilton who hadn't asked her out for a second date, or mooning around for months over some jerk from home who had never asked her out in the first place. Still, the Job Corps was clearly a worthy cause, a chance to do some real good in the world, and so for a day or two Diana felt guilty that she was too cynical to give it a try.