“What I have been wondering about,” he said, very carefully, “is this:  this mechanism of fear, this wall—­how strong is it?”

“Strong?”

“It’s like a dam, I take it.  It holds back certain memories, like a floodgate.  Is anything likely to break it down?”

“Possibly something intimately connected with the forgotten period might do it.  I don’t know, Livingstone.  We’ve only commenced to dig into the mind, and we have many theories and a few established facts.  For instance, the primal instincts—­”

He talked on, with David nodding now and then in apparent understanding, but with his thoughts far away.  He knew the theories; a good many of them he considered poppycock.  Dreams might come from the subconscious mind, but a good many of them came from the stomach.  They might be safety valves for the mind, but also they might be rarebit.  He didn’t want dreams; what he wanted was facts.  Facts and hope.

The office attendant came in.  She was as tidy as the desk, as obsessed by order, as wooden.  She placed a pad before the small man and withdrew.  He rose.

“Let me know if I can be of any further assistance, Doctor,” he said.  “And I’ll be glad to see your patient at any time.  I’d like the record for my files.”

“Thank you,” David said.  He stood fingering his hat.

“I suppose there’s nothing to do?  The dam will either break, or it won’t.”

“That’s about it.  Of course since the conditions that produced the setting up of the defensive machinery were unhappy, I’d say that happiness will play a large part in the situation.  That happiness and a normal occupation will do a great deal to maintain the status quo.  Of course I would advise no return to the unhappy environment, and no shocks.  Nothing, in other words, to break down the wall.”

Outside, in the corridor, David remembered to put on his hat.  Happiness and a normal occupation, yes.  But no shock.

Nevertheless, he felt vaguely comforted, and as though it had helped to bring the situation out into the open and discuss it.  He had carried his burden alone for ten years, or with only the additional weight of Lucy’s apprehensions.  He wandered out into the city streets, and found himself, some time later, at the railway station, without remembering how he got there.

Across from the station was a large billboard, and on it the name of Beverly Carlysle and her play, “The Valley.”  He stood for some time and looked at it, before he went in to buy his ticket.  Not until he was in the train did he realize that he had forgotten to get his lunch.

He attended to his work that evening as usual, but he felt very tired, and Lucy, going in at nine o’clock, found him dozing in his chair, his collar half choking him and his face deeply suffused.  She wakened him and then, sitting down across from him, joined him in the vigil that was to last until they heard the car outside.