buzzer rang once, twice.

Dr. Quink brought his feet down to their more dignified position, out of
sight beneath his desk. His conscious once more took hold of his mind,
only vaguely aware that it had not been able to achieve the incognito
serenity it sought. He put on his glasses and the heavy wooden door
opened and a man walked through.

* * * * *

He carried his hat in both hands, he was nervous, he was out of his
element. He looked to both sides as he came past the doorway, and when
Margaret closed the door behind him he jumped, though nearly
imperceptibly, and advanced toward the desk. "I'm not sure at all I
should have come here," he said.

Dr. Quink nodded, but said nothing. He judged the man to be on the order
of thirty or thirty-one. His hair was black, curly, and sparse; perhaps
balding, perhaps not.

"You see, I can't be quite candid with you. Nothing personal, of course.
It just ... Oh, this is frightfully embarrassing," he said, taking a
seat before the desk at Dr. Quink's waved invitation. "I just thought
that perhaps, even without knowing all the details, you might be able to
effect merely a _tempo_rary cure. So that I can get her back home, to
our _own_ doctors. Nothing personal, of course. I do hope I don't offend
you."

"Not at all, I assure you," Dr. Quink assured him. "Just whom did you
mean by her?"

"Why, my wife." He looked at Quink quizzically for a moment, then with
sudden fresh embarrassment. "Oh, of course. You naturally assume that it
was _I_ who is ... um, in need of treatment. No, no, you couldn't be
more wrong. No, it is my wife. Yes, I've come to see you on her account.
You see, of course, she wouldn't come herself. Ah, this is rather
awkward, I'm afraid."

"Not at all," Quink answered. "If you would just tell me what your
wife's trouble is?"

"Yes, of course. You have to know that, at least, don't you? I mean, do
you? You couldn't possibly just treat her on general principles, so to
speak, without being told of the immediate symptoms? You don't, I take
it, have any technique that would correspond to penicillin, and just
sort of clear things up in her head at random?"

Dr. Quink assured him that it was necessary, in psychiatry at least, to
determine the disease before curing it.

"I suppose so," the gentleman said. "Incidentally, my name is Fairfield.
Donald Fairfield. Did I mention that? But of course, you have all that
on your little card t