The library was a surprisingly small room but its walls rose through two stories with books all the way up to the high ceiling. A mild, yellow and diffused light, radiating from unseen sources, would make reading here—even at the top of the book ladder—as easy for the eyes as if it were broad day.
Clare settled herself in a corner of the very low, built-in modern divan which extended down one entire length of the room, and Lewis, obedient to her gesture, sat down, experimentally, beside her. He had had little practice with modernistic furniture such as this, which, he was learning now, demanded a new technique in posture, unless one were built on angular lines and accustomed to lolling. It would quite suit Farwell, for instance, whose divan it was. But Lewis, who was stocky rather than angular, found himself having to bend in all the wrong places to adapt himself to it. Mrs. Farwell, however, was perfectly at home. She had drawn her feet up under her, Japanese fashion, and sat now perched on her heels, wand-straight, small and exquisite. But then, she was as supple-bodied as a child and as poised as a dancer in every attitude that she assumed.
“I am really delighted,” she was saying, “that you have come, like this. If I had gone into town some day, instead, and seen you in your office, everything would have been so different. I should have had to tell you about things. We may have saved weeks, don’t you think so, Doctor Pryne, in getting you here where you can see it all for yourself and needn’t draw it out bit by bit with questions?”
Clare’s evening gown was flame-colored taffeta, her jewels pearls, her feet—out of sight but remembered—were sandal-shod with gold heels, curved like dagger blades. It was an elegance in striking contrast to the simplicity and seeming carelessness of her afternoon’s appearance. But Lewis felt no contrast. It was all of the same piece: all part of the game. And when he looked away from her, which he did rather quickly in very shame for the ungenerosity of every thought he seemed able to think concerning Petra’s stepmother, it was only to find her voice increasing his prejudice. No matter what ideas her words in themselves conveyed, certain inflections in the tones seemed to be asking over and over, “What do you think of me, what do you think of me, what do you think of me?” It was the eager and unappeasable cry of an insatiate vanity. Lewis hated himself for hearing it so plainly; but his nerves were taut. When had Doctor Pryne allowed himself the excuse of nerves before! Yet to be so near Petra and shut away in here with Mrs. Farwell!
He wound his arms around his knees. That was it. That was what you had to do to come to terms with this fantastic divan. Stick your knees up, almost to your chin, and then not to be altogether too orang-utan-like, wind your arms. The only alternative would be to sit on your feet, as his hostess was doing.
“There wouldn’t have been any need for you to come to my office,” he said. “Not to talk about Petra. She is the last person in the world, to my mind, to need psychiatric treatment.” He might as well get this part over quickly, Lewis felt.
Clare was surprised by the dry conviction with which Lewis spoke, but she was not warned. She swayed toward him, from her heels, and put her hand on his arm. The gesture was as unselfconscious, and un-sex-conscious, as if she were a child of ten. Lewis was aware of her unconsciousness all the time that her fingers stayed there, pressing into his coat sleeve, and her soft warm breath was almost on his cheek. He wondered whether she pawed Dick like this, with casual unselfconsciousness,—and whether Dick found it engagingly innocent. Dick was just the sort of romantic youth—Lewis hadn’t needed Cynthia to explain Dick to him—to confuse sexual paucity with purity.
“Oh, but you don’t understand what we meant then, Richard and I,” she protested. “Psychiatry—anyway as you practise it, Doctor Pryne—is not for diseased minds merely. Petra is terribly sane. Saner than I am, I’m certain of that. It is something less tangible I am asking your help with. I want you to make it possible for my stepdaughter to be true to herself and to be happy.—That wasn’t Petra’s true self you saw this afternoon. I know, Doctor, that it is your faith, as much as it is mine, that most people want to find themselves and be true to themselves, to their best selves, I mean, if only they can be shown how. If you hadn’t that faith in human nature, then you couldn’t do for people what you do. You see I know something about your work. Mrs. Dickerman is one of my intimate friends. Cornelia James too. I’ve known Cornie ever since we were at Miss Foster’s School together. So I know, for I have seen, how you took at least one woman and made her into a charming, agreeable person when she was over thirty. Why, Cornie was the most morbid, oversensitive and unhappy soul until you began treating her!—And even if I hadn’t seen these miracles, I’d still know from reading your books what you can do for people in the way of orientating them with their own highest potentialities. And all I am asking, Doctor Pryne, is that you should do that for my Petra. You do believe, don’t you, that it isn’t natural to her—can’t be natural to any one—to be so secretive and indifferent as she seems? Not at nineteen, anyway! And with Lowell Farwell for a father—and I so devoted to her!”—Clare’s fingers had relaxed their steady pressure but she was slow to remove them from Lewis’s coat sleeve.
Lewis might have laughed. He frowned to save himself from doing so; for it would not have been a pleasant laugh and the frown was, at least, silent. Clare was not the first blasphemous wealthy woman who had tried, casually and even patronizingly, to buy his services as a cure of souls for themselves or members of their family. But in this instance it was Petra’s reserve—that clean, sword-edged reserve—he was being asked to violate. Yes, this woman was looking forward to his pulling Petra all apart, like the works of a clock, and laying the pieces on the table, for them to mull over together.
He could hear Mrs. Lowell Farwell expatiating on it to her next dinner partner. Yet, no. She would hardly do that. It would be worth saving until the conversation was general. “Oh, yes. Doctor Pryne is psychoanalyzing my stepdaughter. He is frightfully interested in her case. It is too wonderful what he has done for her already. She’s a different person. Oh, but you must know who he is! Doctor Lewis Pryne! He wrote ‘Learning to be Adult.’”