way.

* * * * *

_Monday, 22 May._ Aarons drove down from Boston this morning with a girl
named Mary Bolton, and we went to work.

I think I'm beginning to understand how a dog can tell when someone
wants to kick him and doesn't quite dare. I could feel the back of my
neck prickle when that man walked into the conference room. I was hoping
he might have changed since the last time I saw him. He hadn't, but I
had. I wasn't afraid of him any more, just awfully tired of him after
he'd been here about ten minutes.

But that girl! I wonder what sort of story he'd told her? She couldn't
have been more than sixteen, and she was terrorized. At first I thought
it was _Aarons_ she was afraid of, but that wasn't so. It was _me_.

It took us all morning just to get around that. The poor girl could
hardly make herself talk. She was shaking all over when they arrived. We
took a walk around the grounds, alone, and I read her bit by bit--a
feeler here, a planted suggestion there, just getting her used to the
idea and trying to reassure her. After a while she was smiling. She
thought the lagoon was lovely, and by the time we got back to the main
building she was laughing, talking about herself, beginning to relax.

Then I gave her a full blast, quickly, only a moment or two. _Don't be
afraid--I hate him, yes, but I won't hurt you for anything. Let me come
in, don't fight me. We've got to work as a team._

It shook her. She turned white and almost passed out for a moment. Then
she nodded, slowly. "I see," she said. "It feels as if it's way inside,
_deep_ inside."

"That's right. It won't hurt. I promise."

She nodded again. "Let's go back, now. I think I'm ready to try."

We went to work.

I was as blind as she was, at first. There was nothing there, at first,
not even a flicker of brightness. Then, probing deeper, something
responded, only a hint, a suggestion of something powerful, deep and
hidden--but where? What was her strength? Where was she weak? I couldn't
tell.

We started on dice, crude, of course, but as good a tool as any. Dice
are no good for measuring anything, but that was why I was there. I was
the measuring instrument. The dice were only reactors. Sensitive enough,
two balsam cubes, tossed from a box with only gravity to work against. I
showed her first, picked up her mind as the dice popped out, led her
through it. _Take one at a time, the red one first. Work on it, see? Now