A writer and university lecturer, "R--", is waiting for a train when he notices a familiar young woman staring at him. After boarding the train and settling into his beloved Quiet Car, the memory comes back to him: her name is Carol Carson, and many years before, she had been a student in his Dystopian Visions class. He recalls her being shy and boring. She lacked the feisty flirtatiousness of the other two girls he taught and was embarrassingly starstruck by him. As a result, he had dismissed her as uninteresting and ultimately gave her an average mark. He recalls how he'd forgotten to show up to an appointment the girl had made with him, and how she'd written to him several times after the course seeking guidance and he'd ignored her letters. He had never really spared her another thought, as he was caught up in the glamour of his career. Unfortunately, that glamour had ultimately faded. As he exits the train, he encounters Carol again and she tells him, startlingly, that she had heard he died. When he asks her how she felt when she heard, she tells him frankly that she felt nothing much, and that she'd never known him well "when he was alive." It strikes him, at last, that he was not the all-important powerful figure in her life that he always assumed he was.