If Lily’ s love was a stream, clear and mild, then Linda’ s was a volcano. 

Before the volcano exploded she was ignorant, until one day——

Sophie returned to see Linda sobbing despairingly, while others looked very angry. At first, Sophie thought she missed home again. But it was not the case. 

“I don’t know what to do! I did nothing wrong! Why do they hate me so much!”

Helen standing beside her was in a great rage. She beat her fist on the desk. “Damned disgusting really. She thinks her son is somebody, in fact her son is nobody. What an abnormal person she is！”

Even Cathy, the most good-tempered among them, spoke sarcastically. “Just take a look at Chen Lei, a pair of miserable eyes, slow witted and dull.”

The information implied the fact. At the night talk, she heard the whole story. 

A month ago a guy in Class 3 called Chen Lei told Linda he loved her. When Linda heard this, she accepted him without ever hesitating. Because though Chen Lei had a pair of miserable eyes, he was not ugly and he was good tempered. Linda was too shy to tell anyone that she had fell in love. If there were no this incident, all her roommates would be ignorant of this great secret. 

However, it is not accurate to define this matter as an “occurance”. The fact was that Linda was too innocent to judge the depth of the generation gap accurately, and Chen Lei’ s family was very worldly. His parents were officials of a small town, they pocessed some money and they grasped some special rights, so they looked down upon ordinary families. They were very concerned with the “future” of their son, and when they heard that their son fell in love with Linda, they hesitantly “invited” Linda and observed her, to see whether she met their standards. After a meal, Chen Lei’ s parents rejected Linda at once. They said even if they died they could not accept her. Chen Lei implored his mother to be agreeable, but at last his mother even cried very loudly and sadly, her eyes swollen. She said on no condition could she accept Linda. Linda wept, and asked why they were so dissatisfied with her. To her great surprise the answer was like this: You are a good child, but you are not pretty enough to be a member of our elegant family.”

Sophie was too pure to accept any realistic ideas. Together with her roommates, she criticized Chen Lei’ s parents very sternly, addressing them as snobbish couples and frogs in a deep well that could only see a patch of sky. Helen even helped Linda to analysis the “true thoughts” in Chen Lei’ s mother’s mind, saying that her mother had fell in love with her own son, and could not tolerate to see her son snatched by another woman. Her ridiculous theory had made Linda even more miserable, and she had to turn to Lucy, who was much more experienced. She complained she did not know how to face Chen Lei in the next day’s class, and she did not know how her classmates would view this event. Very quickly Lucy came up with a solution. She asked Linda not to come to class anymore, and it would do her better to get online or have a walk outside the classroom. She asked Linda to give up any imagination. A girl and her former lover could never be real friends.