Page:The Return of the Soldier (Van Druten).djvu/95

 [He stops on seeing and.

Mr. Frank Baldry, another cousin. This is Mrs. Grey.

Ah, yes, I want to see you.





[They sit. ''aloof on the window-seat. He stands professionally before the fire''.

(a trifle officiously) : How do you find him, doctor?

You’ve seen for yourself. As I was saying, it’s an obvious case of amnesia. His unconscious self is refusing to let him resume his relations with his normal life, and so we get this loss of memory.



The mental life that can be controlled by effort isn’t the mental life that matters. You’ve been stuffed up when you were were young with talk about a thing called self-control. A sort of barmaid of the soul that says, “Time’s up, gentlemen!” and, “Here, you’ve had enough.” There’s no such thing. But there is a deep self in a man, an essential self, and that has it’s wishes. And if those wishes are thwarted or suppressed by the superficial self—the self