"In short," he concluded, "there is something which we call a soul scar here—a psychic wound—a mental trauma. It bears the same relation to the soul that a wound does to the body. And, as in the case of some wounds, muscles and limbs do not function and must be re-educated, so in these mental and moral cases feelings and emotions must be made to function again, must be re-educated. I need not refer to what caused that wound. I think we understand the reaction that almost any girl would experience against one whom she loved but considered unworthy. I saw it the moment I began to analyze the dreams."
In spite of its intimate nature, Kennedy kept his analysis on almost an impersonal level. It was as though he were telling us the results of his study of some new substance that had been submitted to him for his opinion.
"Mrs. Wilford," he went on, speaking rather to us generally now than to her, "married not for love—whatever she may say or even think about it. Yet love—romantic love—was open to her, if she would only let herself go."
I saw that as he proceeded, Shattuck had colored deeply. He knew the origin of this soul wound in her disapproval of the life he had led at the time. He shifted restlessly.
"All my psychanalysis, by whatever means I went at it, whether merely by study of the dreams or by having them written out a second time in order to compare the omissions and hesitations, whether by the association test, the day-dreaming when relaxed, or the Jung association word test, all the psychological expedients I resorted to, now paying out, as it were, a piece of information, now withholding another, and always watching what effect it had upon the various parties to this case, all, I say, tended toward one end—the discovery of the truth that was hidden from us.
"Finally," he exclaimed, "came the time when I allowed Doyle to place a dictagraph in the apartment, where we might overhear the interplay of the forces let loose by the information which I was allowing to leak out in one way or another."
Involuntarily, Honora turned and caught the eye of Shattuck leveled at her. Each looked startled. What had Craig overheard through that dictagraph? The thought was quite evident in both minds.
Honora gripped her chair. Shattuck turned and stared sullenly at the man before him.
"To return to the dreams," resumed Kennedy, apparently not noticing this interchange of looks and byplay. "From the hesitations in telling and retelling the dreams, from the changes that were made, from a somewhat similar process in tracing out the more controlled thoughts of the waking state, I found that everything confirmed and amplified my original conclusion. True, I did not know all. I may not know all yet. But each time I added to my knowledge until there were so many things that joined up and corroborated one another that there was no human possibility left that I was on the wrong track."
One might have heard a pin drop in the laboratory as Craig held his auditors and carried them along, even after the intensity of feeling that we had witnessed scarcely a few minutes before.