I nodded gratefully, and that was that. In between sips of coffee Morris had concluded that I was a mediocrity—or a genius. I happened to know already that I was neither—that if I applied myself, I’d be fine, more than fine, and if I didn’t, I would probably fall through the cracks. I knew that. What I hadn’t known was something else. Looking at Morris looking out the window across the Hudson, I suddenly wanted very badly to cry. Not for myself, for the first time, maybe, in my life—I had managed just by sitting here quietly to get the better of Morris, to cause him to falter into rudeness—but for myself in ten years, because the other thing I suddenly knew was that Morris’s life was a very likely life, the sort of life one could end up having, if one was not very careful, and I knew, already, in addition to knowing that I was neither mediocrity nor genius, that I was not very careful at all.