CHAPTER THE THIRD

THE NEW PHASE

1

In the course of the next six months the child of the ages became an almost ordinary healthy baby, and Trafford began to think consecutively about his scientific work again--in the intervals of effort of a more immediately practical sort.

The recall of molecular physics and particularly of the internal condition of colloids to something like their old importance in his life was greatly accelerated by the fact that a young Oxford don named Behrens was showing extraordinary energy in what had been for a time Trafford's distinctive and undisputed field. Behrens was one of those vividly clever energetic people who are the despair of originative men. He had begun as Trafford's pupil and sedulous ape; he had gone on to work that imitated Trafford's in everything except its continual freshness, and now he was ransacking every scrap of suggestion to be found in Trafford's work, and developing it with an intensity of uninspired intelligence that most marvellously simulated originality. He was already being noted as an authority; sometimes in an article his name would be quoted and Trafford's omitted in relation to Trafford's ideas, and in every way his emergence and the manner of his emergence threatened and stimulated his model and master. A great effort had to be made. Trafford revived the drooping spirits of Durgan by a renewed punctuality in the laboratory. He began to stay away from home at night and work late again, now, however, under no imperative inspiration, but simply because it was only by such an invasion of the evening and night that it would be possible to make headway against Behren's unremitting industry. And this new demand upon Trafford's already strained mental and nervous equipment began very speedily to have its effect upon his domestic life.

What are the answers to this following set of questions:

1. Did the child become ordinary and healthy?
2. Who was doing work?
3. What kind of work?
4. What was he trying to remember about colloids?
5. What subject are they a part of?
6. Who was from Oxford?
7. Was he lazy about his work?
8. What did he show?
9. Was he encroaching on Trafford's territory?
10. Who do people like Behrens frustrate?
11. Who did he learn from?
12. What did Trafford treat him like?
13. Did he mimic Trafford in every manner?
14. Where did it differ?
15. So what was he looking for now?
16. Was he considered an authority?
17. Was Trafford always given credit for what was his own idea?
18. Who would be given credit?
19. Who did Trafford cheer up?
20. How?

Numbered answers:
1. yes
2. Trafford
3. scientific
4. the internal condition
5. molecular physics
6. Behrens
7. no
8. extraordinary energy
9. yes
10. originative men
11. Trafford
12. a sedulous ape
13. no
14. continual freshness
15. unknown
16. yes
17. no
18. Behren
19. Durgan
20. a renewed punctuality in the laboratory