Page:HG Wells--secret places of the heart.djvu/134

122 be a tattooed creature wearing a knife of stone....”

“The healing touch of history.”

“And for the first time my damned Committee has mattered scarcely a rap.”

Sir Richmond stretched himself in his chair and blinked cheerfully at his cigar smoke.

“Nevertheless,” he said, “this confessional business of yours has been an excellent exercise. It has enabled me to get outside myself, to look at myself as a Case. Now I can even see myself as a remote Case. That I needn’t bother about further.... So far as that goes, I think we have done all that there is to be done.”

“I shouldn’t say that—quite—yet,” said the doctor.

“I don’t think I’m a subject for real psychoanalysis at all. I’m not an overlaid sort of person. When I spread myself out there is not much indication of a suppressed wish or of anything masked or buried of that sort. What you get is a quite open and recognized discord of two sets of motives.”

The doctor considered. “Yes, I think that is true. Your libido is, I should say, exceptionally free. Generally you are doing what you want to do—overdoing, in fact, what you want to do—and getting simply tired.”

“Which is the theory I started with. I am a case of fatigue under irritating circumstances