He was shaking so much then that he had to sit down. Very slowly the room came into focus, the mess of books on the table, the wastebasket overflowing beer cans and carbon paper onto the floor, and the pile of uncorrected themes which he had pushed aside as usual till the eleventh hour. George sat with his head in his hands and looked at it through the eyes of the truculent stranger he had become. Yet last night—far away down a long tunnel in another world—last night, he remembered clearly, as one might remember some forgotten scene of childhood, he had actually begun to write. He had been filled with clarity and power. It had seemed like good work, focused, clear work, the best he had ever done. And while he was doing it, so concentrated, and deeply happy, Edward Cavan had been getting ready to throw himself under an elevated train. As he, George, felt the power shooting up in him like the green drive of spring in a tree, Edward Cavan had cut himself down, and cut so much down with himself that now it seemed to George that half a century had passed and he sat, an old disappointed, self-disgusted man, stewing in his own failure. “The wind at my back,” he said aloud. Yes, it was that. The excruciating loneliness, as if the world he had set his faith on had just crumbled to pieces. “The bastards,” he said, “the dirty bastards.” He was not sure himself to whom this referred.

He had seen Professor Cavan once after their abortive talk at Albiani’s, had seen that the door of his office was ajar and stepped inside just for a moment, wondering if maybe this time would be the time when he could ask his question about a dinner engagement. For Cavan was sitting at his desk, his chair half turned so that he faced the window, and he was looking out, apparently waiting for a student, at any rate in an attitude unusually passive for him. When George spoke, he turned quite suddenly, startled out of whatever thought he had been thinking.