About nine-thirty when the patients had retired and she was starting across the grounds to her home, Dr. Vincintelli called after her and caught up with her.
“What did you make of Woods?” he asked. “I purposely placed him opposite you.”
Kay considered.
“Why, I can’t say I noticed anything. He seemed rather tired and rather embarrassed. Mr. Hughes and Miss Holliday were particularly annoying and absurd and after dinner that alcoholic Chetwind kept asking him how he’d like a highball.”
“I suppose they were showing off for a newcomer.”
“Well, it was a nuisance,” Kay said.
The doctor was silent for a minute.
“It’s a much more serious case than it appears,” he said suddenly.
“Do you think so?” she asked, rather anxiously.
“I talked to him a long while this afternoon. Already he has certain delusions. He will follow the same course toward paranoid dementia that his brothers followed. He’s already receding from reality.” His tone changed, became almost elated. “But it’s wasteful to talk shop on a night like this.”
She was so absorbed in the tragedy of Peter Woods that she hardly knew when he took her arm—realized it only when he said her name in a tender voice. Then she broke sharply away from him.
“Kay, I want to tell—”
“Be quiet!” she cried. “Even if I cared for you, which I don’t, I’d scarcely be in a receptive humor just after hearing a thing like this.”
“But can’t you make your work and your personal life into two separate—”
“I can’t become a monster overnight. Excuse me, I want to be alone.”
She ran on suddenly and left him standing there. Her eyes were full of tears for the unpreventable sadness in the world.
II
My schedule, thought Kay next morning, reads like a debutante’s date list—“see the dancing teacher—see the portrait painter—see the milliner”—except that the dancing teacher, the portrait painter and the milliner arc no longer practicing their professions.
For a moment, standing by the summer window, she forgot them all and the same vague nostalgia for something she had never known had rushed over her. She wanted to be in a boat going to the South Seas, in a town car going to a ball—in an aeroplane going to the North Pole. She wanted to stand in a shop full of utterly useless and highly ornamental jim-cracks—ivory elephants—Algerian bracelets, ear rings, yes and nose rings—and say, “I’ll take this, I’ll take this, I’ll take this.” She wanted to buy out the cosmetics department of a drug store, and talk about trivialities to men who would think of her as decorative rather than competent.
Instead she had to see Mr. Kirkjohn the dancing teacher. Mr. Kirkjohn was a pleasant man in many respects—his only fault was his ambition. Mr. Kirkjohn wanted to go to Paris and walk down from the Arc de Triomphe to the Cafe de la Paix. A harmless enough aim in itself, but during his stroll Mr. Kirkjohn wanted to be entirely unclothed. Failing Paris, Mr. Kirkjohn wanted to be entirely unclothed wherever he was—unless he was alone, when he did not care. Kay’s visits to him were short and unfrequent, for no sooner did her see her than he reached for his tie.
There were other calls, none of them cheerful pastimes save one to a young girl who was cured and was going home. Kay envied her—already she was talking about the clothes she was going to buy and the trip abroad she was going to make this fall.
“You’ll visit me, Doctor, won’t you?” the girl asked. “You’ve done more for me than anyone here.”
“My dear, I wouldn’t know what to say to your friends. I’ve talked science to doctors and baby talk to patients for so long that I’ve forgotten how to chatter. Write me a letter with all the new slang in it. I don’t know anything later than ‘Oh, Yeah?’”
There were several other visits—then she took out her roadster and started for the village five miles away. It was a gorgeous morning and she sang as she drove.
Leaves come tumbling dow-wn overhead
Some of them are brown, some are red
Beautiful to see-ee, but reminding me-ee
Of a faded summer lu-uve—
Suddenly she stepped hard on the brakes—the well set-up man walking down the road had looked up as she passed and to her astonishment she recognized Mr. Peter Woods.
She stopped the car twenty feet beyond him and in the minute during which he came toward her she thought quickly. He had no suitcase and it was obvious that he had simply walked out of the clinic. He must be taken back and if he should prove obdurate she could do nothing alone. The road was lonely, deserted. Should she drive on to the village and phone back to Dr. Vincintelli or should she try persuasion? Her heart beat fast as he came alongside.
“How do you do,” he said, lifting his hat.
“Why, Mr. Woods, how do you happen to be here?”
“I simply walked out,” he admitted with a smile, “I couldn’t stand it any longer.”
“Without seeing Dr. Vincintelli? Really, you should have talked over any such decision with him. It really isn’t fair to the clinic, you know, Mr. Woods. Jump in and I’ll turn around and we’ll drive back and talk to him.”
He shook his head.
“I have taken a dislike to Dr. Vincintelli, and, frankly, to the clinic. The atmosphere doesn’t seem to me very restful.”
“Nevertheless, Mr. Woods, it’s not the thing to start off like this on the road.”
He gave her what she thought was an odd look.
“But you’re starting off like this on the road.”
“That’s entirely different,” said Kay, tartly.
“I don’t see why. Up to four o’clock yesterday I was responsible for my actions—I came here voluntarily for treatment, but if I’d stayed a few more hours I wouldn’t have been responsible for anything.”
She looked at him closely. He seemed to be in a mild and pleasant mood, but remembering what Dr. Vincintelli had told her the night before, she kept the car in gear and her foot on the accelerator.
“Besides,” he said, smiling, “you haven’t told me what you’re doing here.”
There it was, the cloven hoof, the irrational remark.
“Our cases are different, Mr. Woods,” she said firmly. “I am not sick. Did anyone tell you I was?”
“No one has mentioned you to me.” He smiled. “I admit you don’t look sick but I believe it is characteristic of mental trouble to assert that one is perfectly well. Now I know I am as yet utterly sane—and yet—”
“Mr. Woods,” interrupted Kay, “you are doing something you will regret. Why not stay at least until my—until Professor Shafer returns Monday.
The rest can do you no harm.”
“Rest!” He laughed ironically.
“—and will almost surely do you good. You are in no condition to travel.”
“I’m going by automobile. My chauffeur is still waiting for orders in the village.”
“You arc in no condition to travel by automobile.”
Again the odd look, the odd remark.
“Then why are you in condition to travel by automobile?”
This time she did not contradict him but it was saddening to note that spot of darkness, a spot that often widened until it obscures the whole mind. Yet she was somehow not afraid of him now.
“You can be cured, Mr. Woods, and you can be cured here. Our treatment, our plant, is modeled upon the most modern usages in Europe.” She realized that she was quoting from a circular. “You ascertained that or else you wouldn’t have sent your brothers here. If the clinic doesn’t prove suitable to you, Professor Shafer will be the first to advise that you go elsewhere.”
“It will be too late.”
“Never. I’m sure you can be saved.”
“Have they saved you?”
She made her voice softer and more persuasive.
“Mr. Woods, just to oblige me, get in the car.”
“Ha-ho,” he sighed, considering. “If I do, it will be largely for the privilege of sitting beside you. I think your pretty face was the only thing that kept me sane last night at table.”
She hated to admit it, but the compliment pleased her.
“Get in. And we’ll go back and I’ll take you to the carpentry shop.”
“Why should I want to go to the carpentry shop?”
“It’s called ergo therapy—occupational, you know. We no longer believe in repose, you see.”
“Dr. Vincintelli told me to repose—it was like being told to grow three inches.”
“That was merely temporary. You’ll have some vocational occupation assigned to you—something you like.”
“What’s yours? Driving a car?”
“Get in, Mr. Woods.”
“If I do it will be the first really crazy thing I’ve ever done.”
She was thinking that by now they must have discovered his absence and sent out a posse. They had no legal right to detain him by force unless he was a public menace, but Dr. Vincintelli would try to overtake him for purposes of persuasion.
Peter Woods suddenly made a gesture of indifference and got into the car.
“You’re more attractive than Vincintelli,” he said, “and rather more sane than anybody I’ve met.”
“Thank you.” As she started off a car flashed in and out of sight on a neighboring hill and she recognized it as being from the clinic—Vincintelli at last! On an impulse she couldn’t explain to herself, she turned up a side road that circled back to the clinic.
“Are you married?” asked Peter Woods suddenly.
“No.”
“Why don’t you marry? That would probably solve all your problems.”
“Possibly—but marry whom?”
“Wait until I’m well and marry me.”
She looked at him gravely.
“Do you
