'd paid
their visit to the Clyde works. Well, they came yesterday instead. Sir
Vincent has to go to America sooner than he expected, so he wanted to
get it over. When they saw what I'd been trying for during the last six
months they got excited. As a matter of fact it is pretty good. I wish I
could tell you about it, but you know I can't. Also I had told McDermott
that Dynevors, the Birmingham people, had heard my contract was up in
March, and wanted to buy me. So they got frightened, and offered me a
new contract that they thought would keep me." He had finished his meal,
and he pushed away his plate and stretched himself, looking up at her
and smiling sleepily.

"Have you taken it?"

"Rather. It couldn't have been better."

"What is it?"

"They've doubled my screw and given me an interest in the business."

"How?"

He shook his head, yawning. "A permanent agreement ...percentages ...I'm
too woolly-headed to tell you now."

"But what does it mean? You don't care about money or position as a
rule. You've always told me that your work was enough for you. Why are
you so pleased?" Though the moment before she had thought she cared
nothing for the ways that his soul travelled, she was in an agony lest
he had been changed by the love of woman and had become buyable.

He read her perfectly, and pulled himself out of his drowsiness to
reassure her. "No, I'm not being glad because I'm pleasing them; I'm
glad because now I can make them please me. It's what I've always been
working for, and it's come two years before I expected it. I've got my
footing in the biggest armament firm in England. I'm the youngest
director. I've got"--again he made that stiff, sweeping gesture of
arrogance that was not vanity--"the best brain of them all. In ten years
I shall be someone in the firm. In twenty years I shall be nearly
everybody. And think of what sport industry's going to be during the
next half-century while this business of capital and labour is being
fought out, particularly to a man like me, who's got no axe to grind,
who's outside all interests, who, thanks to you, doesn't belong to any
class. And you see I needn't be afraid of losing my power to work if I
meddle in affairs. I'm definitely, finally, unalterably a scientific
man. I've got that for good. That's thanks to you too."

"How could your stupid old mother do that?" she murmured protestingly.

"You're not stupid," he said, and bending down he kissed her head wher