“Like a man who tries to forget that his petrol is running short and a cylinder missing fire....  No.  Come back to the question of what you are,” said the doctor.  “A creature of the darkness with new lights.  Lit and half-blinded by science and the possibilities of controlling the world that it opens out.  In that light your will is all for service; you care more for mankind than for yourself.  You begin to understand something of the self beyond your self.  But it is a partial and a shaded light as yet; a little area about you it makes clear, the rest is still the old darkness—­of millions of intense and narrow animal generations....  You are like someone who awakens out of an immemorial sleep to find himself in a vast chamber, in a great and ancient house, a great and ancient house high amidst frozen and lifeless mountains—­in a sunless universe.  You are not alone in it.  You are not lord of all you survey.  Your leadership is disputed.  The darkness even of the room you are in is full of ancient and discarded but quite unsubjugated powers and purposes....  They thrust ambiguous limbs and claws suddenly out of the darkness into the light of your attention.  They snatch things out of your hand, they trip your feet and jog your elbow.  They crowd and cluster behind you.  Wherever your shadow falls, they creep right up to you, creep upon you and struggle to take possession of you.  The souls of apes, monkeys, reptiles and creeping things haunt the passages and attics and cellars of this living house in which your consciousness has awakened....”

The doctor gave this quotation from his unpublished book the advantages of an abrupt break and a pause.

Sir Richmond shrugged his shoulders and smiled.  “And you propose a vermin hunt in the old tenement?”

“The modern man has to be master in his own house.  He has to take stock and know what is there.”

“Three weeks of self vivisection.”

“To begin with.  Three weeks of perfect honesty with yourself.  As an opening....  It will take longer than that if we are to go through with the job.”

“It is a considerable—­process.”

“It is.”

“Yet you shrink from simple things like drugs!”

“Self-knowledge—­without anaesthetics.”

“Has this sort of thing ever done anyone any good at all?”

“It has turned hundreds back to sanity and steady work.”

“How frank are we going to be?  How full are we going to be?  Anyhow—­we can break off at any time....  We’ll try it.  We’ll try it....  And so for this journey into the west of England....  And—­if we can get there—­I’m not sure that we can get there—­into the secret places of my heart.”

CHAPTER THE SECOND

LADY HARDY