I should be unable to refuse. He would insist on walking to the very top of the Downs. With what had I saddled myself? Directly after dinner I went straight up to my bedroom to avoid an increased intimacy over a cigarette and a liqueur. Next morning I woke to see the line of the Downs hidden in mist and rain. “A day spent in the smoking-room,” I said to myself, “and in so small a place I shall be unable to avoid my comrade of yesterday evening. Perhaps he plays chess.” Fortified with this hope, I had my bath, shaved, dressed, and went down to the breakfast-room. My friend had been before me. There was a teapot and a dirty plate upon the table. I was glad of the respite. But I found him in the smoking-room, sitting, as I had suspected, in the best armchair, with his feet on either side of the fireplace. He was reading a book. I looked over his shoulder to see what it was, and read across the top of the left-hand page: _Einstein’s Theory of Relativity_. So that was it. A schoolmaster. Why had I not thought of it before? A schoolmaster, who had long ago abandoned the habit of independent thought, who was interested in little except athletics, and was even there distrustful of himself, basing his opinions on standard authorities. “A mind,” I said, “that has been dead many years, but that continues to acquire information. He has heard someone speak of Einstein in the common-room, and considers that a schoolmaster should know something about everything. So he buys a handbook at the railway station--a short cut to knowledge, that is his idea of education.” And that evening at dinner I decided to draw him on to his own ground. I spoke of the educational systems of France and Germany. I contrasted the Lycée with the Public School. “We don’t understand education in England,” I said. “We send boys from one classroom to another, a bit of Latin here, a bit of French there, half an hour’s mathematics, and a little science. We call it a general education. It’s nothing of the sort. It’s knowing a little about several things, but nothing thoroughly; and it’s better to know one thing thoroughly than fifty things in bits.” I paused, waiting to be contradicted. “You may very well be right,” he said. “But I’m in no position to judge. I don’t know anything about Public Schools.” “But surely----” “No; I never went to one, and, though I’ve met a good many Public School men in my run of life, I’ve had few opportunities of contrasting their standard of intelligence with that of the French and German. Your criticism would not apply to the men I know, because we are all more or less specialists in the army.” A soldier! And to be reading Einstein. I should have been hardly more astonished if I had discovered a parish priest reading Casanova. “You are surprised?” he said. “Well, a little; I hadn’t thought of you as a soldier.” “So I would suppose; one wouldn’t, but I am, though. A Major in the Inniskillings.”