Henrietta looked at him without speaking. She was aware that the doctor was rather stating aloud the terms of a problem that absorbed him than addressing his sister consciously.
“Do you remember his grandfather whipping him once as a little boy, and his mother saying that he’d been so brave? And even Sir Thomas was pleased with him for that.... You see, the physical isn’t the weak link in the chain for Cecil at all. It’s other things that he minds. He’s most vulnerable where the average Englishman is most impervious.”
The doctor smiled a little, gravely. “His sensibilities—in the French sense of the word.”
“Do you mean his vanity?”
“It’s more than that, with him. It’s his self-respect that’s at stake, always and all the time. At least, that’s how I see it.”
“You mean he’s lost it at that place. Horrible!”
The doctor made a gesture of negation with both hands. “How can I say I know? I don’t know. He’s lost something—and I think he’s acquired something, too. There’s a sort of power of withdrawal about him now.”
“Withdrawal....” She pondered for a moment on the word, knowing his habit of phraseology and the value that a trained mind attaches to the exact word.
“Withdrawal—then you don’t mean a line of defence?”
“No. Or at least only in the negative sense. As far as I can see, and that, Henrietta, is a very little way indeed—the boy hasn’t put up a defence at all—or if he has it’s gone down. He reminds me of that description in one of Newbolt’s things: