Page:HG Wells--secret places of the heart.djvu/62

50 “I’ve not read it.”

“A picture of the Catholic atmosphere; a young soul shut up in darkness and ignorance to accumulate filth. In the name of purity and decency and under threats of hell fire.”

“Horrible!”

“Quite. A study of intolerable tensions, the tensions that make young people write unclean words in secret places.”

“Yes, we certainly ventilate and sanitate in those matters nowadays. Where nothing is concealed, nothing can explode.”

“On the whole I came up to adolescence pretty straight and clean,” said Sir Richmond. “What stands out in my memory now is this idea, of a sort of woman goddess who was very lovely and kind and powerful and wonderful. That ruled my secret imaginations as a boy, but it was very much in my mind as I grew up.”

“The mother complex,” said Dr. Martineau as a passing botanist might recognize and name a flower.

Sir Richmond stared at him for a moment.

“It had not the slightest connexion with my mother or any mother or any particular woman at all. Far better to call it the goddess complex.”

“The connexion is not perhaps immediately visible,” said the doctor.

“There was no connexion,” said Sir Richmond. “The women of my adolescent dreams were