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 where it lay on his shoulder.  “Whatever good there is in me I’ve got from you.  You gave me my brain.  And I’m able to do scientific work because of the example you’ve been to me, though I’m rottenly unfit for it myself.  Mother, look at my hands.  Do you see how they’re shaking?  They’re steady enough when I’m doing anything, but often when there’s nothing to be done they shake and shake.  My mind’s like that.  When there’s someone to impress or govern I’m all right.  But when I’m alone it shakes—­there’s a kind of doubt.  And there’s such a lot of loneliness in scientific work, when even science isn’t there.  Then that comes....  Doubt.  Not of what one’s doing, but of what one is; or where one is.  I never would have kept on with it if it hadn’t been for your example.  I couldn’t have pushed on.  I would have gone off and done adventurous things.

“Do you remember that French chap who wanted me to go with him into British Guiana?  I’d have liked that.  There’s nothing stops one thinking so well as being a blooming hero; and it’s such fun.  And why should one go on doing this lonely work that’s so hellishly hard?  Of course it’s important.  Mother, Science is the most wonderful thing in the world.  It’s a funny thing that if you think and talk about the spirit you only look into the mind of man, but if you cut out the spirit and study matter you look straight into the mind of God.  But what good is that when you know that at the end you’re going to die and rot and there’s not the slightest guarantee which would satisfy anybody but a born fool that God had any need of us afterwards?  You can’t even console yourself with the thought that it’s for the good of the race, because that will die and rot too when the earth grows cold.  One has to stake everything on the flat improbability that service of the truth is a good in itself, such a good that it’s worth while sacrificing one’s life to it.