The Wonder began his last volume of the Encyclopædia one Wednesday afternoon soon after lunch, and on Thursday morning, Challis was continually in and out of the room watching the child's progress, and noting his nearness to the end of the colossal task he had undertaken. At a quarter to twelve he took up his old position in the doorway, and with his hands clasped behind his back he watched the reading of the last forty pages. There was no slackening and no quickening in the Wonder's rate of progress. He read the articles under "Z" with the same attention he had given to the remainder of the work, and then, arrived at the last page, he closed the volume and took up the Index. Challis suffered a qualm; not so much on account of the possible postponement of the crisis he was awaiting, as because he saw that the reading of the Index could only be taken as a sign that the whole study had been unintelligent. No one could conceivably have any purpose in reading through an index. And at this moment Lewes joined him in the doorway. "What volume has he got to now?" asked Lewes. "The Index," returned Challis. Lewes was no less quick in drawing his inference than Challis had been. "Well, that settles it, I should think," was Lewes's comment. "Wait, wait," returned Challis. The Wonder turned a dozen pages at once, glanced at the new opening, made a further brief examination of two or three headings near the end of the volume, closed the book, and looked up. "Have you finished?" asked Challis. The Wonder shook his head. "All this," he said--he indicated with a small and dirty hand the pile of volumes that were massed round him--"all this ..." he repeated, hesitated for a word, and again shook his head with that solemn, deliberate impressiveness which marked all his actions. Challis came towards the child, leaned over the table for a moment, and then sat down opposite to him. Between the two protagonists hovered Lewes, sceptical, inclined towards aggression. "I am most interested," said Challis. "Will you try to tell me, my boy, what you think of--all this?" "So elementary ... inchoate ... a disjunctive ... patchwork," replied the Wonder. His abstracted eyes were blind to the objective world of our reality; he seemed to be profoundly analysing the very elements of thought. VII Then that almost voiceless child found words. Heathcote's announcement of lunch was waved aside, the long afternoon waned, and still that thin trickle of sound flowed on. The Wonder spoke in odd, pedantic phrases; he used the technicalities of every science; he constructed his sentences in unusual ways, and often he paused for a word and gave up the search, admitting that his meaning could not be expressed through the medium of any language known to him.