be less than
useless to ask Rosalind to keep her secret, "has been recommending me a
psycho-analyst doctor. I think it is worth while trying if I can get my
insomnia cured that way."

"My dear mother! After all your fulminations against the tribe! Well, I
think you're quite right to give it a trial. Why don't you get Rosalind
to take you on?"

The fond pride in his voice! Yet there was in his eyes, as they rested
for a moment on Rosalind, something other than fond pride; something more
like mockery.

Mrs. Hilary got up to go, and fired across the rich room the one shot in
her armoury.

"I believe," she said, "that Rosalind prefers chiefly to take men
patients. She wouldn't want to be bored with an old woman."

The shot drove straight into Gilbert's light-strung sensitiveness.
Shell-shocked officers; any other officers; anything male, presentable
and passably young; these were Rosalind's patients; he knew it, and
everyone else knew it. For a moment his smile was fixed into the
deliberate grin of pain. Mrs. Hilary saw it, saw Gilbert far back down
the years, a small boy standing up to punishment with just that brave,
nervous grin. Sensitive, defiant, vulnerable, fastidiously proud--so
Gilbert had always been and always would be.

Remorsefully she clung to him.

"Come and see me out, dearest boy" (so she called him, though Jim was
really that)--and she ignored Rosalind's slow, unconcerned protest
against her last remark. "Why, mother, you know I _asked_ to do
you" ... but she couldn't prevent Rosalind from seeing her out too,
hanging her about with all the ridiculous parcels, kissing her on both
cheeks.

Gilbert was cool and dry, pretending she hadn't hurt him. He would
always take hurts like that, with that deadly, steely lightness. By its
deadliness, its steeliness, she knew that it was all true (and much more
besides) that she had heard about Rosalind and her patients.

5

She walked down to the bus with hot eyes. Rosalind had yawned softly and
largely behind her as she went down the front steps. Wicked, monstrous
creature! Lying about Gilbert's clever, nervous, eager life in great soft
folds, and throttling it. If Gilbert had been a man, a real male man,
instead of a writer and therefore effeminate, decadent, he would have
beaten her into decent behaviour. As it was she would ruin him, and he
would go under, not able to bear it, but cynically grinning still.
Perhaps the sooner the better. Anything was