It changes nothing, he desperately thought frantically. At the same time he felt knew it changed all everything, even the past. 

Lily Avis, squirming on the bench, apologized for the nature of her news. “I assume you would want to know the truth.Please understand I tell you this only because I has some reference, more than indirect, to the future of our department.” She spoke with her eyes shut.  

It took him Levin a while minute to speak through his misery, a complex, self-renewing institution. But Hhe hid the disgust what he felt for Lily so that he might know could learn what there was left to know, afraid to be ignorant of whatever anything that concerned him. “Lover?” he mumbled. “Did Gilley know?” 

"Gerald knew?" 

“Eventually. Yes.” Making the revelation was apparently more important to her than noticing the effect. She seemed not to be aware what she had done to him. She stepped on her cigarette and sat very still. "It all came out when he—when he developed the picture." 

“How do you happen to know this?” Levin asked.  

“We all did. We heard of the picture.” 

“The What picture?” 

She was restless again. The sweat marks around her armpits spread. 

“The photograph How—Oh hHadn’t you heard of it?” She was embarrassed . "I imagined you was surely knew Dr. Fabrikant had told you.” 

“What did you imagine? No." 

She hesitated, then quickly said, “I thought someone surely told you of the picture Howard Gerald took of photograph of them on the beach one day at the coast. It’s ancient history now, so there’s nothing wrong in telling you that tThey were both naked as the livelong day. This was on the beach at the coast.I assumed you knew, or I—I wouldn't—”