into millions. Which will last his
time--damn him! And that is where we are.... Oh! I know! I know!.... I
must do this job. I don't need any telling that my life will be nothing
and mean nothing unless I bring this thing through....

"But the thanklessness of playing this lone hand!"

The doctor watched his friend's resentful black silhouette against the
lights on the steely river, and said nothing for awhile.

"Why did I ever undertake to play it?" Sir Richmond appealed. "Why has
it been put upon me? Seeing what a poor thing I am, why am I not a poor
thing altogether?"

Section 8

"I think I understand that loneliness of yours, said the doctor after an
interval.

"I am INTOLERABLE to myself."

"And I think it explains why it is that you turn to women as you do. You
want help; you want reassurance. And you feel they can give it."

"I wonder if it has been quite like that," Sir Richmond reflected.

By an effort Dr. Martineau refrained from mentioning the mother complex.
"You want help and reassurance as a child does," he said. "Women and
women alone seem capable of giving that, of telling you that you are
surely right, that notwithstanding your blunders you are right; that
even when you are wrong it doesn't so much matter, you are still in
spirit right. They can show their belief in you as no man can. With all
their being they can do that."

"Yes, I suppose they could."

"They can. You have said already that women are necessary to make things
real for you."

"Not my work," said Sir Richmond. "I admit that it might be like that,
but it isn't like that. It has not worked out like that. The two drives
go on side by side in me. They have no logical connexion. All I can say
is that for me, with my bifid temperament, one makes a rest from the
other, and is so far refreshment and a renewal of energy. But I do not
find women coming into my work in any effectual way."

The doctor reflected further. "I suppose," he began and stopped short.

He heard Sir Richmond move in his chair, creaking an interrogation.

"You have never," said the doctor, "turned to the idea of God?"

Sir Richmond grunted and made no other answer for the better part of a
minute.

As Dr. Martineau waited for his companion to speak, a falling star
streaked the deep blue above them.

"I can't believe in a God," said Sir Richmond.

"Something after the fashion of a God," said the doctor insidiously.

"No," said Sir Richmond. "Nothing that