Whittenden's reply came on the instant.
"Trying to believe too many things too hard."
"Hm!" Opdyke appeared to be considering. "Well, I think perhaps you've hit it. However, there are some extenuating circumstances. Give a man a dozen years or so of the mental starvation of a New England wilderness, and then all at once fill him chock full of new ideas, and he gets a pain within him, just as painful a pain as if it were in his tummy, not his mind. In time, it leads to chronic indigestion. That's what Brenton's got."
"Yes; but that is cause, not extenuating circumstance," Whittenden objected.
"It's extenuating, just the same. And then the wife! She is—"
"Well?"
"A pill," Reed said briefly.
"What sort?"
"Born common and dense. Grown self-centred and conceited. Lately turned from ultra-ritualistic to incipient Eddyism."
"That's bad."