Page:HG Wells--secret places of the heart.djvu/59

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“Since our first talk in Harley Street,” said Sir Richmond, “I have been trying myself over in my mind. (We can drift down this backwater.)”

“Big these trees are,” said the doctor with infinite approval.

“I am astonished to discover what a bundle of discordant motives I am. I do not seem to deserve to be called a personality. I cannot discover even a general direction. Much more am I like a taxi-cab in which all sorts of aims and desires have travelled to their destination and got out. Are we all like that?”

“A bundle held together by a name and address and a certain thread of memory?” said the doctor and considered. “More than that. More than that. We have leading ideas, associations, possessions, liabilities.”

“We build ourselves a prison of circumstances that keeps us from complete dispersal.”

“Exactly,” said the doctor. “And there is also something, a consistency, that we call character.”

“It changes.”

“Consistently with itself.”

“I have been trying to recall my sexual history,” said Sir Richmond, going off at a tangent. “My sentimental education. I wonder if it differs very widely from yours or most men’s.”