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was henceforth an uncomfortable friendship. Each seemed anxious to be amicable, but neither felt at ease with the other. Stephen's nerve, I think, had been seriously shaken. It was not that he feared another licking, but that his self-respect had suffered. I took an opportunity to suggest that his defeat had been no disgrace, since John was clearly no ordinary child. Stephen jumped at this consolation. With a hysterical jerk in his voice he said, "I felt—I can't say what I felt—like a dog biting its master and being punished. I felt—sort of guilty, wicked."
    John, I think, was now beginning to realize more clearly the gulf that separated him from the rest of us. At the same time, he was probably feeling a keen need for companionship, but companionship of a calibre beyond that of normal human beings. He continued to play with his old companions, and was indeed still the moving spirit in most of their activities; but always he played with a certain aloofness, as it were with his tongue in his cheek. Though in appearance he was by far the smallest and most infantile of the whole gang, he reminded me sometimes of a little old man with snowy hair condescending to play with young gorillas. Often he would break away in the middle of some wild game and drift into the garden to lie dreaming on the lawn. Or he would hang around his mother and discuss life with her, while she did her house-work, tidied the garden, or (a common occupation with Pax) just waited for the next thing to happen.
    In some ways John with his mother suggested a human foundling with a wolf foster-mother; or, better, a cow foster-mother. He obviously gave her complete trust and affection, and even a deep though perplexed reverence; but he was troubled when she could not follow his thought or understand his innumerable questions about the universe.
    The foster-mother image is not perfect. In one respect, indeed, it is entirely false. For though intellectually Pax was by far his inferior, there was evidently another field in which she was at this time his equal, perhaps even his superior. Both mother and son had a peculiar knack of appreciating experience, a peculiar relish which was at bottom, I believe, simply a very special and subtle sense of humour. Often have I seen a covert glance of understanding and amusement pass between them when the rest of us found nothing to tickle us. I guessed that this veiled merriment was in some way connected with John's awakening interest in persons and his rapidly developing insight into his own motives. But what it was in our behaviour that these two found so piquant, I could never discover.
    With his father John's relation was very different. He made good use of the doctor's active mind, but between them there was no spontaneous sympathy, and little community of taste save intellectual interest. I have often seen on John's face while he was listening to his father a fleeting contortion of ridicule, even disgust. This happened especially at times when Thomas believed himself to be giving the boy some profound comment on human nature or the universe. Needless to say it was not only Thomas, but myself also and many another that roused in John this ridicule or revulsion. But Thomas was the chief offender, perhaps because he was the most brilliant, and the most impressive example of the mental limitations of his species. I suspect that John often deliberately incited his father to betray himself in this manner. It was as though the boy had said to himself, "I have somehow to understand these fantastic beings who occupy the planet. Here is a fine specimen. I must experiment on him."
    At this point I had better say that I myself was becoming increasingly intrigued by the fantastic being, John. I was also unwittingly coming under his influence. Looking back on this period, I can see that he had already marked me down for future use, and was undertaking the first steps of my capture. His chief method was the cool assumption that