We had dinner in his room and talked afterwards until late, and I don't think I ever remember him so garrulous. Yes, garrulous. But he wouldn't, for all that, tell me what his success that day had been. He kept throwing out obscure hints--as if the guarding of the secret obsessed and worried him. Once I mentioned the word "cancer," but he shrugged his shoulders rather excitedly and told me to guess that, or anything else, if I liked. It wasn't _he_ who insisted on secrecy, he said, but Karelsky, and of course he was under obligation to obey Karelsky's rule.... The whole matter seemed to me just slightly childish, for if he couldn't tell me anything of importance, why didn't he change the subject? But he didn't; perhaps he couldn't. He kept reverting to it at every pause in the conversation; he kept assuring me that his work had made him wonderfully happy; there was nothing, he said, in the whole world so wonderful as doing what was worth doing. All that sort of talk rather surprised me; it reminded me of a revivalist's rhapsody on the joys of salvation. I'm not sneering--don't think that. It's just that I couldn't have imagined him saying some of the things he did say. He _was_ different--mightily different. IV We went to Buda-Pesth. When I think of all that happened as a result of our going, the question occurs to me: What _drove_ us there? That we _were_ driven, by some kind of ironical fate, is a tempting theory if only because of the numerous reasons against going which were either ignored or overridden. I don't know even now why in the end I agreed to it. I positively loathed the thought of getting up early in the morning and, after two days and two nights of travel, embarking on a third day. Besides, I had left my work to visit a sick friend, not a friend who cheerfully invited me to go on holiday with him. Terry, of course, wasn't to know that. He thought I had come to Vienna on business, and as I had vaguely assured him that the business could be transacted at any time, the main avenue of argument against the Buda trip was closed to me. All I could say was that I was tired after the journey, to which he replied that nothing could be more suitable for a tired traveller than a whole day on a river-steamer. "Besides," he added, "I know how keen you were to see Buda the last time you were here." (That was true enough.) "And--to tell you the truth--I have never quite forgiven myself for not going with you then. It was selfish of me...."