In public she tried to ignore him, having learned on her first visit that nothing diminished a woman in this place as fast as an attachment to one of the men. She avoided him at breakfast, at the morning poster sessions, at the afternoon and evening talks. At dinner she listened to him discussing the mountains of data gathered by Darwin—pigeons! Had anyone ever written so much about pigeons?—as if he were just another acquaintance passing along a familiar tale. Between the talks, she floated around before settling down next to Dee, scribbling notes while speakers defined the structure of retroviral proteases. There were groups from Paris and groups from Poland; talks attended only by specialists in that area and talks for which, despite the heat, they all crowded into the largest meeting room. Rosalind’s talk, about polyubiquitin chains, was one of those.

The success of her presentation was, she mistakenly thought, the most important part of her visit that year, and it drew her into a group of similarly glittering young investigators. One afternoon she was sitting with them on a corner of the porch, facing a much-needed breeze while gently mocking the hobbies and dumpy clothes and general slackness of the older scientists. Where had their ambition gone? Their concentration?

“They go out antiquing,” Elora said scornfully, which made everyone laugh until a sunspotted face suddenly rose from the ground below them. Then they were mortified, especially (the man was Sebastian’s advisor, who’d chosen Sebastian to be there: as they’d each been chosen by someone old) when he tried to laugh off what he’d overheard.

“So cruel!” he said. Ha ha ha. His waving hand resembled a bundle of broken twigs. “Like a bunch of little wolves.”

Rosalind smiled, before guiltily hiding her face. People she’d known only vaguely for years suddenly wanted to talk with her; strangers approached her at meals; a journalist from a general science magazine wanted her to write an article. All day she fizzed around, catching up with Dee, who was having her own thrilling success, whenever they could find each other. Afterwards, very late, she met Sebastian.