Divorce proceedings and World War II delay Humbert’s voyage to New York. He takes a job writing and editing perfume ads and another translating French literature for an American university. The work is exhausting, but he enjoys watching "nymphets" in Central Park. A nervous breakdown lands him in a sanatorium for two stints lasting more than a year. Then, he takes part in a trip to the Arctic, where his job is to monitor the psychology of others on the expedition. The trip—and its absence of temptations—improves his mental health, but he finds the job itself boring. He publishes a fictional but sensationalized report of the exploration. In the US again, he returns to the sanatorium where he amuses himself by toying with his psychiatrists by creating fake symptoms and never telling them anything about his actual sexual proclivities. He leaves and rejoins the world. 

Humbert wishes to go to New England and finds Ramsdale, where a cousin of one of his uncle’s employees, Mr. McCoo, is looking to rent his attic. McCoo has a twelve-year-old daughter about whom Humbert fantasizes, and Humbert travels there only to find that the McCoos’ house has burned down. He is upset by the inconvenience, but Mr.