"Campanella," said Hugh, without betraying the slightest interest in
Miss Corner. "Nothing changes in England, because the people who want to
change things change their minds before they change anything else. I've
been in London talking for the last half-year. Studying art they call
it. Before that I was a science student, and I want to be one again.
Don't you think, Sir, there's something about science--it's steadier
than anything else in the world?"

Mr. Direck thought that the moral truths of human nature were steadier
than science, and they had one of those little discussions of real life
that begin about a difference inadequately apprehended, and do not so
much end as are abandoned. Hugh struck him as being more speculative and
detached than any American college youth of his age that he knew--but
that might not be a national difference but only the Britling strain. He
seemed to have read more and more independently, and to be doing less.
And he was rather more restrained and self-possessed.

Before Mr. Direck could begin a proper inquiry into the young man's work
and outlook, he had got the conversation upon America. He wanted
tremendously to see America. "The dad says in one of his books that over
here we are being and that over there you are beginning. It must be
tremendously stimulating to think that your country is still being
made...."

Mr. Direck thought that an interesting point of view. "Unless something
tumbles down here, we never think of altering it," the young man
remarked. "And even then we just shore it up."

His remarks had the effect of floating off from some busy mill of