QUOTE : The meal was lavish and lengthy; the conversation laboured. At least so far as Claudia was concerned it was barely classifiable as conversation. For Caxton, she realised, it might have seemed quite adequate. He is totally incurious. In three days she has rarely heard him ask a single personal question of anyone. This insularity seems to be not so much egotism as a deficiency induced by years of having other people intensely interested in his every word or action.