Page:HG Wells--secret places of the heart.djvu/22

10 ravelled strand behave disproportionately. You don’t want that. You want to take stock of yourself as a whole—find out where you stand.

“But the Fuel Commission?”

“Is it sitting now?”

“Adjourned till after Whitsuntide. But there’s heaps of work to be done.

“Still,” he added, “this is my one chance of any treatment.”

The doctor made a little calculation. “Three weeks.... It’s scarcely time enough to begin.”

“You’re certain that no regimen of carefully planned and chosen tonics——”

“Dismiss the idea. Dismiss it.” He decided to take a plunge. “I’ve just been thinking of a little holiday for myself. But I’d like to see you through this. And if I am to see you through, there ought to be some sort of beginning now. In this three weeks. Suppose....”

Sir Richmond leapt to his thought. “I’m free to go anywhere.”

“Golf would drive a man of your composition mad?”

“It would.”

“That’s that. Still—... The country must be getting beautiful again now,—after all the rain we have had. I have a little two-seater. I don’t know.... The repair people promise to release it before Friday.”