"Pyromania."
"What?"
"A passion for setting places on fire. He started it as quite a small boy; they licked it out of him then. All his boyhood he went in fear of the rod, and it kept him straight. Only the other day he goes up to Oxford, and promptly sets fire to his rooms."
"Some form of atavism, I presume?"
"A very subtle case, if I were free to give you its whole history."
"I should be even more interested in your treatment."
"Well, I needn't tell you that he's bandaged up for burns; but you might not guess that he has come by this lot since I've had him, if not almost at my hands."
"At any rate I'm responsible for what happened, and it's going to cure him. It was a case of undisciplined imagination acting on a bonnet with just one bee in it. He had never realized what a hell let loose a fire really was; now he knows through his own skin."
The statesman's eyebrows were like the backs of two mutually displeased cats.