If you want the snob angle, at least get it right. Of course I don’t mean you, I mean the Florida paper. Personally I don’t think much of titles.”

“Because you come of a family that’s proud of its age rather than rank?”

“I guess you’re right. It’s probably an inverted snobbery. We certainly think we’re superior to a lot of these businessmen baronets.”

“You say ‘we.’ Does that mean you feel yourself more English than American?”

“When I’m talking to you I do. When I’m talking to an Englishman I feel I want to chew gum. It’s the perverse streak in me.”

“Does that mean you feel American when you’re with your mother?”

“Sometimes…. Though she’s not so terribly English. I’ve met Russians and Irish that are more like her. She’s more true to herself than to any nationality. Not that I mean she doesn’t act, sometimes. But when she does, she doesn’t really mind if you see through it. And you can act back. She doesn’t mind that either.”

“I’m afraid I’m not much good at acting.”

“I wasn’t meaning you personally.”

“I’m sorry. I thought—perhaps—well—”

“I was just talking generally. I’m sorry if you—”

“How did we get onto this argument, anyway?”

“I forget.”

He thought for a moment, then said: “We were discussing beauty—the sense of beauty—”

“Were we?”

“Mozart, it started with….”

“Oh yes, you said you were beginning to like classical music.”

“I think I could like it, if I heard more. It’s strange how—if you’re in a certain mood—the awareness of beauty comes over you—”

“It comes over me in any mood. I mean, it can put me in the mood. When we were in the Cathedral just now, for instance….”

“Yes—but it didn’t get me as much as Mozart.”

“Maybe we should have asked the organist to play some Mozart.”

“I’ll ask your mother when I’m next up at the house.”

“Yes, do…. You come up quite often now, don’t you? While I’ve been away…. I’m so glad.”

We returned to Cambridge by bus and he called at the Cavendish again to pick up something—“results,” he said, that he had left there in the morning for a check. When he glanced over them later in the train I tried to tell from his face whether everything had been satisfactory, but he looked neither pleased nor displeased—only preoccupied. Presently, as he put the papers away, he said: “Well, that’s that.”

“What is?”

“A month’s work and it turns out to be wrong.”

“Oh, I’m sorry.”

“Nothing to be sorry about. It’s not an emotional matter.”

“But a whole month! Couldn’t you have found out you were wrong sooner?”

“Perhaps not—though the Cavendish does have better facilities. Might save time in the future if I had access to them more often.”

“Couldn’t you work there?”

He smiled. “You don’t know how lucky I am to be able to work anywhere. You should have known me the last time I went inside a cathedral.”

“Where was that?”

“St. Patrick’s, New York.”

“Are you a Catholic?”

“No. I used to go in for warmth and rest when I was looking for a job. That was in 1931.”

“You’ve come a long way in five years.”

“It’s not how far you come that counts—it’s the direction you take and whether you ever find the right track.”

“Do you think you’ve found it?”

“I think I know where to look for it. And a few wrong answers won’t put me off.”

There was a sort of grittiness in his voice that made me think he was fighting down disappointment over his wasted month.