. I assure you that several
times when I spoke to him this morning he nodded his head."

"A good beginning," laughed Challis.

"I can't understand," I went on, "how it is that you are not more
interested. It seems to me that this child knows many things which we
have been patiently attempting to discover since the dawn of
civilisation."

"Quite," said Challis. "I admit that, but ... well, I don't think I want
to know."

"Surely," I said, "this key to all knowledge----"

"We are not ready for it," replied Challis. "You can't teach metaphysics
to children."

Nevertheless my ardour was increased, not abated, by my long talk with
Challis.

"I shall go on," I said, as I went out to the farm gate with him at
half-past two in the morning.

"Ah! well," he answered, "I shall come over and see you when I get
back." He had told me earlier that he was going abroad for some months.

We hesitated a moment by the gate, and instinctively we both looked up
at the vault of the sky and the glimmering dust of stars.

The same thought was probably in both our minds, the thought of the
insignificance of this little system that revolves round one of the
lesser lights of the Milky Way, but that thought was not to be expressed
save by some banality, and we did not speak.

"I shall certainly look you up when I come back," said Challis.

"Yes; I hope you will," I said lamely.

I watched the loom of his figure against the vague background till I
could distinguish it no longer.

CHAPTER XVI

THE PROGRESS AND RELAXATION OF MY SUBJECTION

I

The memory of last summer is presented to me now as a series of
pictures, some brilliant, others vague, others again so uncertain that I
cannot be sure how far they are true memories of actual occurrences, and
how far they are interwoven with my thoughts and dreams. I have, for
instance, a recollection of standing on Deane Hill and looking down over
the wide panorama of rural England, through a driving mist of fine rain.
This might well be counted among true memories, were it not for the fact
that clearly associated with the picture is an image of myself grown to
enormous dimensions, a Brocken spectre that threatened the world with
titanic gestures of denouncement, and I seem to remember that this
figure was saying: "All life runs through my fingers like a handful of
dry sand." And yet the remembrance has not the quality of a dream.

I was, undoubtedly, overwrought at times. There