Mrs. Fletcher had returned with rugs and wrapped the boy round with them. When Fletcher and his wife had gone, John and Lindon sat in silence. Lindon could see Dean's face in the dim light and his eyes were still very bright as he looked up at the sky. "Scissors," said Lindon quietly, "why did you faint?" "I don't know, Lindon--you frightened me, I think." "Am I so terrible?" the question was asked jokingly but not without an undercurrent of feeling. "No--but you fascinate me--you have done since the first. It's only when you are playing that I really seem to see you properly." Lindon gave a short laugh. "What a queer little beggar you are--I suppose the East is in your blood. I hope Vernley hasn't been playing on your imagination too much--he talks about me?" "No, he doesn't," said John shortly, "and you shouldn't ask me--I'm his friend." "I'm sorry, Scissors--it is caddish, only--" he broke off and looked out into the night. John sat in silence and waited. He knew Lindon wanted to say something. Presently he spoke. "You see, Scissors, I don't want anything to upset our--well, we get on fairly well, don't we? Somehow you've made me feel--oh, I'm talking rot." "I suppose you've seen how I watched you," said John, "--I simply couldn't hide it--I'm a little fool I know." "That's what made it all so difficult. It's not easy being a god," responded Lindon. "You've put me on a pedestal--and I want to keep on it." They talked more easily after that. CHAPTER III I It had been arranged that John should spend the Christmas and Easter holidays with his housemaster. Fletcher had a cottage in Wales where he went at the end of each term to repair his shattered constitution. There, he dressed in a most amazing assortment of tweeds, smoked endlessly, loved to sit in village bars and listen to village gossip, and tramped over the mountains with inexhaustible energy. John spent the first fortnight with the Fletchers, after which he went on to Vernley's people, who sent him a cordial invitation to their home in Essex. It was there that John first became acquainted with the amazing possibilities of life. The Vernleys lived in a rambling old house with long corridors in which John could lose himself. Indeed, everything was on the spacious side, with that heavy, solid prosperity stamped on it which somehow fitted the Vernleys and all of John's preconceptions of them. Mr. Vernley was a broad-shouldered man with a shock of black hair and a tremendous voice. Mrs. Vernley was stout and tall, talked rather loudly and made a draught whenever she moved, but she radiated kindliness. The family, too, was on the large scale, for John found himself being introduced to a crowd of brothers and sisters who varied from being wonderfully beautiful to uncompromisingly ugly.