June came, and final exam, and then I returned to Wisconsin, where Mother was waiting. It was June 21 when I returned; since not all colleges end their spring semester simultaneously, some of my brothers had been home for more than a week, others had not yet arrived. Richard had sent word that he was in Los Angeles, and would be with us after the first of July. Mark had signed a baseball contract and was pitching for a team in New Mexico, and he, too, would not be with us.
The summer passed rapidly. We spent it as we had in the old days before college, sharing our individual specialties, talking, meeting regularly and privately with Mother to discuss the goals that still lay ahead. Except for Claude and George, we had scattered in different directions, no two of us at the same school.
I returned to Princeton that fall, for my sophomore year. It passed, and I made the homeward journey again, and in the fall travelled once more eastward. The junior year went by likewise.
And I began to detect signs of a curious change in my inward self. It was a change I did not dare mention to Mother, on those July days when I met with her in her room near the library. I did not tell my brothers, either. I kept my knowledge to myself, brooding over it, wondering why it was that this thing should happen to me, why I should be singled out.
For I was discovering that the study of history bored me utterly and completely.
The spirit of rebellion grew in me during my final year in college. My marks had been excellent; I had achieved Phi Beta Kappa and several graduate schools were interested in having me continue my studies with them. But I had been speaking to a few chosen friends (none of whom knew my bizarre family background, of course) and my values had been slowly shifting.
I realized that I had mined history as deeply as I ever cared to. Waking and sleeping, for more than fifteen years, I had pondered Waterloo and Bunker Hill, considered the personalities of Cromwell and James II, held imaginary conversations with Jefferson and Augustus Caesar and Charles Martel.
And I was bored with it.
It began to become evident to others, eventually. One day during my final semester a friend asked me, "Is there something worrying you, Harry?"