“Oh, it must be a man?  I was going to say, I’ve a vacancy myself for a patient.  But women usually want men doctors.  They nearly all do.  It’s supposed to be part of the complaint....  Well, I could fix you up a preliminary interview with Dr. Claude Evans.  He’s very good.  He turns you right inside out and shows you everything about yourself, from your first infant passion to the thoughts you think you’re keeping dark from him as you sit in the consulting room.  He’s great.”

Mrs. Hilary was flushed.  Hope and shame tingled in her together.

“I shan’t want to keep anything dark.  I’ve no reason.”

Rosalind’s mocking eyes said “That’s what they all say.”  Her lips said “The foreconscious self always has its reasons for hiding up the things the unconscious self knows and feels.”

“Oh, all that stuff....”  Mrs. Hilary was sick of it, having read too much about it in “The Breath of Life.”  “I hope this Dr. Evans will talk to me in plain English, not in that affected jargon.”

“He’ll use language suited to you, I suppose,” said Rosalind, “as far as he can.  But these things can’t always be put so that just anyone can grasp them.  They’re too complicated.  You should read it up beforehand, and try if you can understand it a little.”

Rosalind, who had no brains herself, insulting Mrs. Hilary’s, was rather more than Mrs. Hilary could bear.  Rosalind she knew for a fool, so far as intellectual matters went, for Nan had said so.  Clever enough at clothes, and talking scandal, and winning money at games, and skating over thin ice without going through—­but when it came to a book, or an idea, or a political question, Rosalind was no whit more intelligent than she was, in fact much less.  She was a rotten psycho-analyst, all her in-laws were sure.

Mrs. Hilary said, “I’ve been reading a good deal about it lately.  It doesn’t seem to me very difficult, though exceedingly foolish in parts.”

Rosalind was touchy about psycho-analysis; she always got angry if people said it was foolish in any way.  She was like that; she could see no weak points in anything she took up; it came from being vain, and not having a brain.  She said one of the things angry people say, instead of discussing the subject rationally.

“I don’t suppose the amount of it you’ve been able to read would seem difficult.  If you came to anything difficult you’d probably stop, you see.  Anyhow, if it seems to you so foolish why do you want to be analysed?”

“Oh, one may as well try things.  I’ve no doubt there’s something in it besides the nonsense.”

Mrs. Hilary spoke jauntily, with hungry, unquiet, seeking eyes that would not meet Rosalind’s.  She was afraid that Rosalind would find out that she wanted to be cured of being miserable, of being jealous, of having inordinate passions about so little.  Rosalind, in some ways a great stupid cow, was uncannily clever when it came to being spiteful and knowing about you the things you didn’t want known.  It must be horrible to be psycho-analysed by Rosalind, who had no pity and no reticence.  The things about you would not only be known but spread abroad among all those whom Rosalind met.  A vile, dreadful tongue.