Vita is an undergraduate when she catches the attention of Royce. She is sharply focused, slightly solitary, evidently gifted. Something in her reminds him of his own youth, of the woman he loved then and of what happened to her. So he grants her a scholarship - a transaction that will bind her to him, in subtle and inescapable ways, for the rest of her life.
What passes between them haunts Vita for years. She spends her life playing cat and mouse with his shadow, seeing it slip across the mountains behind her, feeling its chill at her back. So when, decades later, Royce gets in touch once again, Vita has her own reasons for responding. He still sees her as the helpless ingenue. But she is not that any more.