Bloodied hands clutch at icy rocks. Alyce Urquhart is fighting sleep, snow falling on her face, the temperature falling below zero degrees Fahrenheit.

After a lecture, Simon Meech, Alyce’s philosophy section instructor, takes her back to his apartment. As they are walking, he asks her opinion on the lecture he has just given. She doesn’t have one. She says she is a mere second year. She doesn’t know anything. Yet she is exhilarated, some attraction bringing her closer to Meech. When he fucks her, it hurts. He tries to pull out but fails at the last second. Alyce is terrified. For weeks after, she thinks she might be pregnant. Every morning, she rips the cover off her dorm-room bed to check for blood. Nothing. She cannot tell anyone.

Then, Roland B____, her poetry professor, enters her life. She impresses him by reciting a little known Yeats poem in class. She had memorized it accidentally in an anthology she had read in her first year poetry class. Walking in the snowy quad one day, Roland runs into her and invites her for tea at his guest residence on campus, the Poet’s House. She says she can’t stay, but he insists. He stands very close to her and holds her hands tightly. She feels all the strength has gone out of her body, but he lets her go.

She stops seeing Simon, stops going to his lecture. Despite the strange interactions with Roland B____, who continues to invite her over, she spends more and more time with the poetry professor. They drink tea and have biscuits. Eventually he starts offering her alcohol and even gets a little drunk from it himself. After a while, he asks her to be his assistant and archivist. She agrees. One night, they get to discussing Alice from Lewis Carroll’s story. Alyce argues Alice was an orphan. There is no mention of her parents. Roland says Alyce is “his Alice.”

Alice is debating killing herself. Her belly is swelling, and she has not bled in she-doesn’t-know-how-long. But a pregnancy is only nine months. It will end soon. A life is a life. Plus, she doesn’t know how she’d do it, and none of the typical ways appeal to her.

One night at the Poet’s House, Roland gets more drunk than usual. In an emotional rush, she tells him she is pregnant. He comforts her and then offers to marry her. It could be their child. He starts kissing and touching her, breathing heavy. After a little, she tells him to get off of her. He goes to the bathroom, and Alyce feels a sound like a body falling. Something has happened to Roland’s heart. Alyce calls an ambulance.

In the hospital, Roland relies on Alyce for strength. He looks pitiful with his gray-haired chest and flaccid pectorals full of wires all connected to machines.

Meech writes Alyce out of the blue. He asks her to meet at a restaurant. She agrees. At the restaurant, he asks about Roland. Has she been seeing him? When? How? When did it start? What would he want with a girl like her? Alyce summons the strength to shut him down, end the conversation. He offers to drive her back to campus. She agrees. He takes a long route, a detour, heading towards the country. Alyce is frightened. He demands to know if she is pregnant. How long? Alyce doesn’t say. He is driving faster and faster. She pulls the car door open and jumps out. He chases her on foot, into the icy ravine where he beats her.

Her ghost rises from her body and walks along the road to the hospital. She walks into Roland’s hospital room, where he has been waiting for her.