Steven said, "All the time—not all the time."

The doctor repeated patiently, "Why?"

Steven looked at the doctor and said a very strange thing. "They touch me." He seemed to shrink into himself. "Not just with their hands."

The doctor shook his head sadly. "Of course they do, that's just—well, maybe you're too young to understand."

The interview went on for quite a while, and at the end of it Steven was given a series of tests which took a week. The psychiatrist had not told the truth; what the boy said, during the first interview and all the tests, was fully recorded on concealed machines. The complete transcript made a fat dossier in the office of the Clinic Director.

At the end of the tests the Director said seriously to Steven's parents, "I'll be frank with you. You have a brilliant kiddie here—right now he has the intelligence of a twelve-year-old—but brilliance has to be channeled in the right direction. Just now—well, frankly, it's channeled in the wrong direction. We'll give it a year or so, and then if things don't clear up I'm afraid we'll have to correct him."

Richard said through dry lips, "You mean a Steyner?"

The Director nodded. "The only thing."

Harriet shuddered and began to cry. "But there's never been anything like that in our family! The disgrace—oh, Dickie, it would kill me!"

The Director said kindly, "There's no disgrace, Mrs. Russell. That's a mistaken idea many people have. These things happen occasionally—nobody knows why—and there's absolutely no disgrace in a Steyner. Nothing is altered but the personality, and afterward you have a happy normal kiddie who hardly remembers that anything was ever wrong with him. Naturally nobody ever mentions it.... But there's no hurry; in the case of a kiddie we can wait a while. Bring Stevie in once a week; we'll try therapy first."

Being, as the Director had said, a brilliant kiddie, Steven soon understood much of what was kept from him. It did not take him long to learn what was making his Dadsie look stern and white and what was making his Mumsie cry. He loved his parents and did not want them to be unhappy, and he certainly did not want to have his head cut open, and so he began to act. Even at five, Steven discovered in himself a fine talent for acting. He began to conform, to adjust, to merge. He became social 

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