'You have been good enough to allude to me in one of your recent lucubrations,' he said, shaking the paper at me. 'It was in the course of your somewhat fatuous remarks concerning the recent Saurian remains discovered in the Solenhofen Slates. You began a paragraph with the words: «Professor G. E. Challenger, who is among our greatest living scientists-«'

'Well, sir?' I asked.

'Why these invidious qualifications and limitations? Perhaps you can mention who these other predominant scientific men may be to whom you impute equality, or possibly superiority to myself?'

'It was badly worded. I should certainly have said: «Our greatest living scientist,"' I admitted. It was after all my own honest belief. My words turned winter into summer.

'My dear young friend, do not imagine that I am exacting, but surrounded as I am by pugnacious and unreasonable colleagues, one is forced to take one's own part. Self-assertion is foreign to my nature, but I have to hold my ground against opposition. Come now! Sit here! What is the reason of your visit?'

I had to tread warily, for I knew how easy it was to set the lion roaring once again. I opened McArdle's letter. 'May I read you this, sir? It is from McArdle, my editor.'

'I remember the man – not an unfavourable specimen of his class.'

'He has, at least, a very high admiration for you. He has turned to you again and again when he needed the highest qualities in some investigation. That is the case now.'

'What does he desire?' Challenger plumed himself like some unwieldy bird under the influence of flattery. He sat down with his elbows upon the desk, his gorilla hands clasped together, his beard bristling forward, and his big grey eyes, half-covered by his drooping lids, fixed benignly upon me. He was huge in all that he did, and his benevolence was even more overpowering than his truculence.