dick hand at forty-two had, as has been said, a tremendous reputation and an equally tremendous dissatisfaction. the one had no perceptible relation to the other. of the one the world was thoroughly aware, of the other it was not. his dissatisfaction was known to richard hand alone.

there were times when it swayed him absolutely, when it “came over him,” and he could not get away from it. he could not have told you what it was,[241] really; for sometimes he felt it to be one thing, sometimes another. now it was an immense discontent with all he had done or was doing, now it was an unreasonable irritation with life itself.

everything, he found at such times, was worthless.

one day, in a fit of absolute disgust, he went to a specialist. he had no expectation that the man could help him, but he had got where he must do something.

he had expected to be shown into a darkened room where a fellow more or less dressed for a part would take his hand gravely, as if performing a rite, and then, retreating to the distance and becoming semi-invisible, would intone questions in a ceremonial voice while the conversation was written down on the wax tablets of a silently travelling phonograph.

but the office was as unlike that as possible, and so was the specialist.

a bright room with a sort of sun-parlour on the south side, a place of wicker furniture and cretonnes, with books and magazines lying about and tobacco on the table. with his eyeglasses and a sober seriousness of face when in repose, the man who received him was hardly distinguishable from a business man of comfortable habit, moderately large affairs, and fairly frequent preoccupations. they shook hands; the specialist offered mr. hand a cigarette and took one himself.

“let’s come out here,” he said, indicating the sun-parlour.[242] “it’s pleasanter and the chairs are better to lounge in.”

they disposed themselves and puffed away for a moment or two.

“i’ve come to see if you can help me,” explained dick hand, rather desperately. the other nodded.

“i get fairly sick of—existence,” dick went on. “i’m restless and rottenly dissatisfied, and i don’t know why. nothing seems to mean anything. i have these spells, and they are commoner than they used to be.”

“tell me all about yourself,” suggested the other. “only what you call to mind and only what you care to tell.”

dick hesitated. “i thought,” he said, “that you people asked questions—to get at certain things hidden from us of whom you ask them.”

“well, we do that,” admitted the specialist. “but it usually is better to hear a man’s own story first. after we have got the things a man readily recalls, comes the problem of getting at the things he doesn’t recall.”

“i suppose the idea is the relief afforded by making a clean breast of things,” hazarded dick.

“not entirely. it goes beyond that. it aims at relieving unsuspected pressures. there’s a sort of an analogy in a physical injury, such as a fracture. the man who has the fracture knows that something is[243] wrong, he suffers intense pain, but he doesn’t know that a bone is broken, or, if he does, he doesn’t know just where, nor how to set it. and he suffers too much to be able to find out.”

“well, there’s certainly a fracture somewhere in my life,” said dick hand, grimly. “and i suffer. and i don’t know where it is or how to set it.”

after a little pause he entered upon his story. it was when he had entirely finished and sat silent that the specialist spoke again.

“you say you were once in love?”

“it was the only time i ever was in love,” replied richard hand. “she was two years younger than i. we more or less grew up together. we were both in our twenties when she refused me for good and all. she was already in love with another man and she was married to him a little later.”

“you use the past tense. is she dead?”

“no, she isn’t. she is alive and has four children. her husband has disappeared lately, left her and the children. by the way, he would make a case for you! if you could cure him i’d say you could cure anybody.”

“it isn’t we who cure,” explained the other man patiently. “we no more cure a man than does the surgeon who sets a broken bone. we just try, like him, to get things straightened out so they can cure themselves. tell me about her husband, who has disappeared.”

dick recounted guy vanton’s story. it was a long[244] recital but the specialist seemed interested. at the end dick asked: “what do you make of it?”

“it is a bad case,” thoughtfully, “but it isn’t hopeless. it might even come out all right. i’m afraid not, though. if she—if his wife could not straighten things out for him there isn’t much likelihood that anybody else can. she must be a very fine woman. and they genuinely loved each other. no doubt of that. love—and children. they are the ultimate satisfaction of most men and women, but not of all. i imagine that he is an exception to the general rule. there was something else that he hadn’t got. perhaps he will find it.”

“a fine woman.... love—and children ... the ultimate satisfaction.” the words struck something in richard hand. he looked up suddenly and spoke in a harsh voice:

“i suppose if i had got her and if—if they were my children...?”

the adviser looked at him gravely.

“i think there is no doubt about it,” he answered.

they sat there in the gathering twilight for some time in a silence fraught with the pain of a deep revelation. richard hand struggled with the thing that stood revealed to him and within him. after a while he said, in words that seemed to choke him: “but what shall i do? what—what can i do—about it—now?”

“look the thing full in the face, as you are doing now, and conquer it,” the other counselled.

[245]after a pause he went on to explain: “you love her, you have always loved her. and because you love her you will love her children, as a part of her. as long as you suppressed your love for her, as long as you refused to acknowledge it even to yourself, so long it continued to punish you in other ways. it did not so act upon you as to prevent you doing good work and profiting by it; but when you had done great work and had profited by it this suppressed longing stepped in and robbed you of the reward you had earned by destroying all the beauty and meaning of life for you, by turning your victories to ashes in your mouth, by making everything you were doing or had done or might do, pointless and futile. for you the final satisfaction would have lain exclusively in doing all these things for her.

“why haven’t you done them for her? why don’t you? you can. you can make her yours and her children your own. i’m not, of course, suggesting anything disgraceful or dishonourable. i am suggesting that you look the truth in the face like an honest man—though you haven’t been intentionally dishonest with yourself. outward conventions are responsible for most of the ingrowing minds. look the truth in the face like an honest man and fight the good fight like a brave man.

“say to yourself—you won’t have to say it to her—just this: ‘i love her; i have always loved her. i always shall. i have done everything i have done for[246] her, always, though i didn’t perhaps know it, and certainly did not admit it. it isn’t wrong to recognize it and it’s not wrong to admit it to myself; it’s merely a piece of honesty, and it’s an outlet for what would otherwise be suppressed and denied until it fouled and poisoned my whole life. at the same time this thing must be kept under control, just as any outlet must be controlled. i mustn’t let it, in its flow, do damage as great as it would in its stagnation—and a worse. i must be as honest as the day about it and as strong as i am honest.’”

it was quite dark. the two sat there motionless for a while. then richard hand got up and came toward the other man, offering him his hand.

“thank you,” he said, and his voice was boyish and alive. “i think you have shown me a way out—if i am strong enough to take it and hold to it. i—i think i shall go and visit her—and find out.”

the adviser gripped his hand and shook it warmly.

“go, by all means,” he declared. “nothing is gained by denial of the truth; nothing is gained by suppression. everything worth winning is won by fighting, and there is no impulse in us which cannot be bitted and bridled and curbed and made to serve us for a righteous end.”