That last statement may have had a double intention. It is obvious from the Wonder's preliminary question,--which had, indeed, also the quality of an assertion,--how plainly he had recognised that Grossmann had been introduced under false pretences. But, it is permissible to infer that the pronouncement went deeper than that. The Wonder's logic penetrated far into the mysteries of life and he may have seen that Grossmann's attitude was warped by the human limitations of his ambition to shine as a great exponent of science; that he dared not follow up a line of research which might end in the invalidation of his great theory of heredity. Victor Stott had once before expounded his philosophy and Challis, on that occasion, had deliberately refused to listen. And we may guess that Grossmann, also, might have received some great illumination, had he chosen to pay deference to a mind so infinitely greater than his own. CHAPTER XIII FUGITIVE Meanwhile a child of five--all unconscious that his quiet refusal to participate in the making and breaking of reputations was temporarily a matter of considerable annoyance to a Fellow of the Royal Society--ran through a well-kept index of the books in the library of Challis Court--an index written clearly on cards that occupied a great nest of accessible drawers; two cards with a full description to each book, alphabetically arranged, one card under the title of the work and one under the author's name. The child made no notes as he studied--he never wrote a single line in all his life; but when a drawer of that delightful index had been searched, he would walk here and there among the three rooms at his disposal, and by the aid of the flight of framed steps that ran smoothly on rubber-tyred wheels, he would take down now and again some book or another until, returning to the table at last to read, he sat in an enceinte of piled volumes that had been collected round him. Sometimes he read a book from beginning to end, more often he glanced through it, turning a dozen pages at a time, and then pushed it on one side with a gesture displaying the contempt that was not shown by any change of expression. On many afternoons the sombrely clad figure of a tall, gaunt woman would stand at the open casement of a window in the larger room, and keep a mystic vigil that sometimes lasted for hours. She kept her gaze fixed on that strange little figure whenever it roved up and down the suite of rooms or clambered the pyramid of brown steps that might have made such a glorious plaything for any other child. And even when her son was hidden behind the wall of volumes he had built, the woman would still stare in his direction, but then her eyes seemed to look inwards; at such times she appeared to be wrapped in an introspective devotion.