"No, it's free," Andrea whispered, moving her bag and letting the woman sit down next to her. Andrea felt a flutter of annoyance at the girl's interruption of her note-taking, but quickly lost herself again in the combined pleasures of watching the handsome professor and waiting for him to make an error.<br/><br/>Disappointingly for Andrea, there was not much in the professor's speech that she could take issue with. It was mainly concerning the lives of slaves during the queen's reign, a subject she had never felt comfortable with or had much interest in. She much preferred to focus on the feminist overtones of the powerful queen Cleopatra, rather than the dark realities of her rule.<br/><br/>The lecture did seem to fly by for Andrea. She smiled at the professor's attempted jokes and even occasionally laughed out loud, her boisterous giggle carrying notably over the sounds of the rest of the auditorium. She had come into the lecture hoping to catch him on an incorrect fact, but when the time for questions arrived she hadn't the heart to point out the few slight nit-picks she had.<br/><br/>With the speech over, the crowd began to disperse, and Andrea took the opportunity to speak to the woman next to her. "Hello there, I'm Andrea Peyton," the tall black woman said, standing up gracefully on her heels, "It was nice sitting with you. Where are you off to now?"<br/><br/>Andrea herself felt like having a drink - it was the only proper way to recover from hours discussing the dead. She didn't know much about the late-arriving woman next to her but she did much prefer her company over the old windbags that made up most of the rest of the audience.<br/><br/>Andrea and the woman walked and talked, heading up the stairs out of the theater.