"I can't believe you're making me do this."

"Come on, Dude, I want to see her, and you know I can't speak to her alone."

Raj and Howard were arguing in the hallway outside Raj's office when Leonard and Sheldon came through. "What are you making him do?"

Howard complained: "He is making me go with him over to Baxter Hall to find that… Rosalind. Man, she's not even that pretty. And she dresses like an English teacher."

"You take that back! And… Dude, she is an English teacher." Raj was hurt. After all the stupid bars and all the times he'd been the third wheel with Howard and Bernadette, Howard's objections seemed petty.

"I'm just saying, you're so smitten with her that you think she's prettier than she really is. Objectively speaking, she's not that great. And by the way, what kind of relationship is this, anyway? She touches your arm, looks in your eyes, and suddenly she's a goddess?"

"Leonard, you tell him." Raj was bouncing back and forth, trying to keep himself from hitting his friend.

Leonard waded in with a fatherly air. "Well, Raj, you are a bit twitterpated. But, Howard, so what? If he likes her, what does it matter if she's not a fashion model?" It was worse than dealing with teenagers.

"I just think this is a big waste of time, is all." Howard did not want to be appeased.

"Twitterpated? Like Bambi?" Raj was overexcited.

"Raj, focus. And stop bouncing."

"Prince of the forest. Cool." Raj shook out his hands and took a few deep breaths, trying to calm himself.

Leonard rolled his eyes. Not teenagers, fourth-graders.

Sheldon weighed in. "Leonard is right. There's no logical reason for any two people to get together. Raj and Rosalind have as much to go on as anyone else does, as far as I can tell. Certainly this is better than the usual alcohol and desperation. "

Leonard tried another approach. "Howard, how many times has Raj gone to bars with you? This is what friends do." Turning to Raj, he continued. "What are you going to say to her?"

Raj was nonplussed; Sheldon interposed. "It seems that you should have some sort of pretext for your visit. There is no good reason for you to be in the humanities building, unless you are simply there to observe the faculty as though they were animals in the zoo. I certainly cannot imagine any better reason to go over there."

Leonard gave his roommate a sideways glance, but agreed. "He's right. You've got to have some reason for going over there."

"Can't I just go over to say hi?" wondered Raj.

"Yeah, but you don't say hi. I have to say hi, and then you'll just stand there with a silly grin on your face." Howard was still irritated.

"She makes me smile. What's wrong with that?"

Leonard sighed and pulled out his keys. "Come into my office, you two. I'll see if I can help you."

A few minutes later, Raj and Howard were on their way across campus, Raj happily tucking into his pocket a printout of a scholarly article on gender in superhero comics. He knew exactly where to find Rosalind's office.

When they got there, she was in – of course, Raj had found out her office hours – and talking with an undergraduate: "…So, while I like the idea that Faust is a parody of academia, can you see how you need to provide specifics from the text to persuade me? In science, your experiment needs to be reproducible, right? In literature, I need to be able to read the text and see what you saw, OK?"

Raj and Howard exchanged glances in the hallway – Raj was smiling, happy to think of Rosalind as a good teacher, but Howard was already anxious to get back to his lab. The undergraduate was closing up his laptop and prolonging his conversation with Rosalind; they caught the tail end of his comments: "And I'm sorry about your mother, Dr. Wald. I hope you're OK."

"Thank you, Bryan. It wasn't a surprise, and it was peaceful. I'm trying to focus on those things. Let me know if you have any more questions about your paper. And Dr. McIntyre will cover class on Friday, don't forget. I'm not canceling." As she gestured toward the door, she looked up to see Howard and Raj in the hallway, and her smile was warmer as she met Raj's eyes. "Come in, come in. I don't have enough chairs, I'm afraid, but we can improvise," and she gathered her skirt around her, perched herself on the edge of her desk, and gestured to the two chairs.

"Wow, your office is so tiny," said Howard, as his eyes followed the bookcases to the ceiling. There was no spare wall space; she'd hung her diplomas on the bookcases to save room.

"It must seem that way to you," she said, "but this is actually the only office I've ever had to myself, so it seems palatial. But then, I don't operate the Mars Rover from in here." Howard sat up straighter, a bit gratified.

Raj leaned over and whispered in Howard's ear; Rosalind waited, already accepting the unique rhythm of conversation with Raj. Howard turned to her: "What happened to your mother? … We overheard …" Suddenly this seemed like an awkwardly personal sort of conversation, and he was uncomfortable.

"Oh, yes. She died. Saturday morning."

Howard didn't know how to respond – Rosalind seemed genuinely distressed, and he wasn't sure if he would be devastated or delighted to hear such news about his own mother. He didn't ponder this for long, because he was distracted by Raj's response. Raj spoke. Whether out of surprise at the news or concern for Rosalind or under the influence of some other power, Raj yelped, "You must be so sad!"

Surprised to hear his own voice, Raj blushed deeply and clapped his hands over his mouth for a moment before dropping them back in his lap.

Rosalind smiled broadly and reached out to rest her hand on Raj's. "Well, thank you, I am. But I will be fine. May I say, it's very kind of you to say it."

Howard just stared at Raj.

Raj dropped his eyes to his knee, where Rosalind's hand rested on his. He took a deep breath, and covered her hand with his free hand, then looked up at her. He didn't even try to say anything else. At that point, he wasn't sure if he cared if he ever spoke again.

Howard was still staring at Raj, and they were all still for a moment, before Howard shook his head and stood up. "Well, I'm sorry about your mother, but I think we should… Raj…" This was far more than he had bargained for.

Rosalind responded quickly. "Of course, of course. To the lab with you, away. Thank you so much for coming to see me." She released Raj's hands; although her words were for both of them, her eyes remained fixed on him. The two men went into the hall, and she sat down at her desk and pulled some papers toward her.

"What the hell was that?" Howard hissed in the hall.

"Go ahead, I'll catch up with you," Raj replied, before returning to lean against the wall across the hall from Rosalind's office. They remained like that for a few minutes; she marking on her papers, he gazing through her open office door. At one point, she reached up and lifted her Bryn Mawr diploma to pull out a book; she grabbed a post-it note from her desk drawer, jotted a note on it, and placed it carefully on what seemed like a particular page of the book. She paused, still for a moment before rising from her desk and turning to Raj. He looked up and down the hall; it was too late to run, and he smiled shyly.

"If you lurk too long, you get homework," Rosalind said, as she handed him the book. "Pay particular attention to Act IV and V. And… if you can't talk to women, maybe you can text them. Now, go, before this gets creepy."

Raj was halfway across campus before he looked at the book in his hand: Shakespeare's As You Like It.