Felix said: ‘Guido also loves women of history.’
‘Mary’s shadow!’ said the doctor.
Felix turned. His monocle shone sharp and bright along its edge. ‘People say that he is not sound of mind. What do you say?’
‘I say that a mind like his may be more apt than yours and mine—he is not made secure by habit—in that there is always hope.’
Felix said under his breath: ‘He does not grow up.’
Matthew answered: ‘The excess of his sensibilities may preclude his mind. His sanity is an unknown room: a known room is always smaller than an unknown. If I were you,’ the doctor continued, ‘I would carry that boy’s mind like a bowl picked up in the dark; you do not know what’s in it. He feeds on odd remnants that we have not priced; he eats a sleep that is not our sleep. There is more in sickness than the name of that sickness. In the average person is the peculiar that has been scuttled, and in the peculiar the ordinary that has been sunk; people always fear what requires watching.’
Felix ordered a fine. The doctor smiled. ‘I said you would come to it,’ he said, and emptied his own glass at a gulp.
‘I know,’ Felix answered, ‘but I did not understand. I thought you meant something else.’
‘What?’
Felix paused, turning the small glass around in his trembling hand. ‘I thought’, he said, ‘that you meant that I would give up.’