“But you’ve got to understand, because I can see what you’re both thinking, that there was a kind of a sense of make-believe to the whole thing. Most of the time we were together, Adam and I were never all-the-way serious—it’s a fine point, hard to put across. In a way, it was like the Jonas Bradys in Switzerland: we were in school, school was unreality, and we could afford to let our minds fall into dissipation. We could go on intellectual benders and know, at the same time, that it wasn’t of any account. Do you understand that?”

“Sure,” Driscoll said. “You might not believe this, Mr. Haller, but I went to college once myself. For all I know, so did Link.”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean anything. It’s just that it’s a little confusing to me, and I’ve gone through it . . . What I’m trying to say is that it was, in a sense, no more than a game. Go over to the University right now, and you’ll find hundreds of avowed Communists, you know? Some of them might even know what communism means. But it doesn’t signify, except the taking advantage of a nice situation. The newspapers and magazines certainly don’t understand this. They’re always attacking the ‘college Commies’ and urging all sorts of ridiculous measures. Which is stupid—the truth is that it’s healthy to be able to dabble in these things in a state of harmlessness. For that reason, what the hell, I never objected to Max Blake’s courses, any more than I would object to fraternity orgies. Because the few students whose thinking is actually shaped by university life are always able to bring these things into their proper focus.

“Adam and I stayed friends, even though I was no longer attending Blake’s courses. We occasionally went out on double-dates together, or, sometimes, for a drive down Sunset to the beach, alone, to talk. It wasn’t strained.

“But I began to sense a change in him. He wouldn’t allow any disrespectful remarks to be made about Blake, and even went so far, once, as to suggest that the reason I withdrew was because I was afraid. Again, it was part of the game; and I went along with it. Maybe so, I said. Maybe I don’t want to be a dictator. And he’d laugh then, and everything would be okay.

“But he was changing. He seemed troubled, not in the way we’d been, but in a deeper way. Once he said, ‘What does a guy do, Pres, when he’s been told all his life that he can’t do anything? When he’s been trained through the years for failure?’

“ ‘Succeed,’ I told him.

“He said that was right.