Having returned to MIT in an “anxious, uneasy frame of mind” (190), Nash finds relief from his worries and the boredom of teaching by visiting the music library almost daily. One day, he recognizes one of his past students working as a librarian.

Alicia Larde is “delicate and feminine, with pale skin and dark eyes” and an ability to exude “both innocence and glamour” (190). She is also “bright, vivacious, playful, and talkative […] occasionally sarcastic and often very sharp” (190).

At school, she had dreamed of becoming a nuclear scientist and, in 1951, she began studying at MIT, majoring in physics. Here, she attended a calculus course taught by Nash and, in a setting where “mathematics was the highest thing,” she was instantly attracted to his “combination of brain, status, and sexual appeal” (196). When the course finished, she took a job in the music library, knowing that Nash regularly visited.

Whenever Nash visits the music library, Alicia strikes up conversations and “studie[s] him as minutely as any fan studies his or her favorite star” (197). She begins to mimic his interests, learning chess when she finds out that he plays and “sitting in the science library near the science fiction section” (197) when she discovers he enjoys science fiction novels.