It was as they returned that
Sir Richmond took up the thread of their overnight conversation again.
"In the night," he said, "I was thinking over the account I tried to
give you of my motives. A lot of it was terribly out of drawing."
"Facts?" asked the doctor.
"No, the facts were all right. It was the atmosphere, the
proportions.... I don't know if I gave you the effect of something Don
Juanesque?..."
"Vulgar poem," said the doctor remarkably. "I discounted that."
"Vulgar!"
"Intolerable. Byron in sexual psychology is like a stink in a kitchen."
Sir Richmond perceived he had struck upon the sort of thing that used to
be called a pet aversion.
"I don't want you to think that I run about after women in an habitual
and systematic manner. Or that I deliberately hunt them in the interests
of my work and energy. Your questions had set me theorizing about
myself. And I did my best to improvise a scheme of motives yesterday.
It was, I perceive, a jerry-built scheme, run up at short notice. My
nocturnal reflections convinced me of that. I put reason into things
that are essentially instinctive. The truth is that the wanderings of
desire have no single drive. All sorts of motives come in, high and low,
down to sheer vulgar imitativeness and competitiveness.
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