“That just shows you don’t understand the power of suggestion,” he said.  “At the hospital—­I’ll never forget it.  There was a girl brought in dying of burns.  We got it from her that she was very unhappy and had set herself on fire because the woman next door had been burnt to death.  Old Professor Hay, our lecturer in psychology, explained it to us.  He said the girl was in a weak state of nerves and health generally, owing to family troubles she’d had to shoulder.  She was receptive to suggestion, you see.  And she was too tired to think logically.  Seeing the burnt woman there very peaceful, and people sorry for her—­don’t you see?”

Marcella nodded.

“I’m pretty sure I’d never have got to this state of things if I’d never known it was in the family.  It seems inevitable, as if I’m working out a laid-down law.”

“Louis, I’m not very clever.  As I told you, father used to call me a double-distilled idiot when he got in a temper.  But I do think you’re wrong.  People are not a part of families nearly so much as they are themselves.  Besides—­imagine letting anything get you down, and put chains on you like that!” she added scornfully.

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said bitterly.  “It simply chews you up, gnaws holes in you.”

She thought of what Dr. Angus had said.

“Well then, patch yourself up and go on again.”

“But after all, why should you?  There’s nobody cares tuppence now what happens to me.  I’m an outcast.”

“Louis, what was that you promised your mother—­I heard you on the ship just as the tender was going?  Didn’t you promise to make yourself better?”

“Yes, but I’ve been thinking about it.  Why should I?  What does it really matter to the Mater?  She didn’t care enough not to have me spewed out of home.  She’s at home now; they’ll be sitting round the dinner-table after a tip-top meal.  Presently they’ll be playing whist and congratulating themselves that I’m safely out of England.  They’ll breathe freely now.”

“I don’t believe it,” she said quickly.  “Mothers and fathers are not like that.”

“That’s all you know.  All day to-day, after she got back from Tilbury and had powdered the traces of tears from her face she’d be at Harrods or the Stores, buying things.  And she’d take just as much interest in matching some silks for embroidery, and getting the exact flavour of cheese the Pater likes as she took in making me promise not to drink.  And to-morrow her friends will come, with an air of a funeral about them, and be discreetly sympathetic about the terrible trouble she has been having with Louis—­such a pity—­after he promised so well!  Oh be damned to them all!  I’m not going to care any more.”

Marcella sat in miserable silence.  She did not know enough to say anything helpful.  She had no idea what had cured her father.  She had seen him a drunkard; she had seen him ill, no longer a drunkard; she had seen him die and guessed dimly that the drinking had killed him.  But she suddenly grasped the fact that she had seen effects—­whole years of effects; of causes she knew nothing whatever.