“Please … is anything the matter?”

“I hate storms, Leni, that’s all.”

“It is nearly over now.”

“Yes, I hope so … I’m sorry to have to tell you … about that job …”

He told her all that had happened, ending with: “I tore it up, but I daresay she’s written it again and posted it by now.”

Suddenly it occurred to him that they were both children, acting and talking like children, with the same terrible intentness upon the hostile behavior of a grown-up.

“It means I won’t get the job?”

“Probably not. But don’t worry. I’ll look in at the Burrowsford Library to-morrow — there may be some advertisements in scholastic papers. The trouble is, as we’ve already found, most of those posts go to people who have degrees.”

“Degrees?”

“What do you call them? I forget. Diploma? Baccalaureate? Doctorate?”

“Oh yes, I know.”

An idea came to him, an offshoot, of an already favorite idea. “Of course there’s one thing you really ought to do, especially if you can’t get a job.”

“What’s that?”

“Take up the piano seriously. There must be a school somewhere you could join. Yes, I’ll look it up to-morrow in Burrowsford. There’s a conference there — I’ve got to attend. I hate things like that, but I’m on the board of the County Hospital and it lets me in for them now and again. Of course I could lend you the money for the fees and you could pay me back when you get a job again … Yes, that certainly is an idea. I’ll find all the details for you to-morrow. You see, there’s an excellent reference library in Burrowsford — much better than here … Perhaps the Academy of Music or something like that — in London, it might be. Maybe they offer scholarships and you could win one. I’ll find out everything for you.”

“But I’m not really a pianist, you know. I’m a dancer.”

“Ah yes, of course. I was forgetting. Well, perhaps you could do that as well.”

“Did you ever see the Russian Ballet?”

“I’m afraid not. In Calderbury, we hardly ever —”

“When I was in Petersburg — before I had to escape — I once saw Nijinsky.”

It was plain that he had never heard of Nijinsky. He said, “Oh yes?”

“Would you like me to dance for you?”

He answered, with a touch of shyness: “Well, that would be very nice. I should certainly like it. But I don’t quite see how —”

“Yet sometime, perhaps?”

“Yes, of course. Meanwhile I’ll look up those advertisements for you. I still feel that it would be worth your while to take up the piano seriously —” And his mind ran easily on, as pleasantly unimpeded by practical knowledge as it usually was outside his own immediate world. And the following morning he went to the Burrowsford conference, which was just what he had expected it to be. Four days of listening to reports and speeches, of being chaffed by colleagues, of eating hotel meals — it was not the kind of life for which he had any social or temperamental aptitude. During his first day he found time to visit the library and spend an hour searching in a desultory way through year books and almanacs. He was one of those people who dislike asking expert advice, and, of course, as a professional dispenser of such advice, he was wholly inconsistent in this. He would have blamed a mother for not calling him in till too late, but he would not ask a library assistant how to look up details about entry into colleges of music. After much random searching he was fortunate enough to hit on the information he wanted; then he sat at one of the library desks and wrote as follows: —