"
Section 5
After a meditative silence the doctor became briskly professional again.
"You care for your wife," he said. "You care very much for your wife.
She is, as you say, your great obligation and you are a man to respect
obligations. I grasp that. Then you tell me of these women who have come
and gone.... About them too you are perfectly frank... There remains
someone else." Sir Richmond stared at his physician.
"Well," he said and laughed. "I didn't pretend to have made my
autobiography anything more than a sketch."
"No, but there is a special person, the current person."
"I haven't dilated on my present situation, I admit."
"From some little things that have dropped from you, I should say there
is a child."
"That," said Sir Richmond after a brief pause, "is a good guess."
"Not older than three."
"Two years and a half."
"You and this lady who is, I guess, young, are separated. At any rate,
you can't go to her. That leaves you at loose ends, because for some
time, for two or three years at least, you have ceased to be--how
shall I put it?--an emotional wanderer."
"I begin to respect your psychoanalysis."
"Hence your overwhelming sense of the necessity of feminine
companionship for weary men. I guess she is a very jolly companion to be
with, amusing, restful--interesting.
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