He deflated in front of three hundred people.

And every one of them who had smiled at him that day, who had shaken his hand and called him a lucky man, was now revising, in real time, every warm thing they had ever thought about him.

I did not have to do a single further thing to him.

I had let him talk, and I had let the room hear it, and the room did the rest.\n\nLinda’s confidence was gone.

She had sat down again at some point without my noticing, and she looked, suddenly, old, and small, and caught.