Self-reproach whispered to her in the dawning: “Delilah! Delilah! Delilah!”
PART TWENTY-NINE
THE LIFTING OF SHADOWS
§ 1
It is no use pretending that Patricia was not ashamed of herself. She was—desperately so. She felt she had been guilty of immodesty, that she had forfeited her husband’s respect. Even when she realized that Peter’s damaged memory retained few details of their night except his promise to consult her father about his “nerves,” shame haunted her. Constantly, she expected him to remember, to judge, to condemn. . . . Yet actually, she had saved him!
For Peter’s “case” was, in the terms of psycho-pathology (which is the science of soul-illnesses), one of “repressed complexes”: in simpler language, of bottling-up his emotions. At their first interview, Heron Baynet put the matter to him very simply. Heron Baynet said:—
“You have been twice wounded. One wound is in your arm; the other in your mind. The flesh wound, you let us cure: you understood that it needed antiseptics, drainage, bandages, rest. The wound in your mind, you concealed from us; and it has festered. Now, tell me what you are most afraid of?”
“Consumption,” admitted Peter.
“Why?”
“I don’t know. I’m afraid I’ve got it.”
“Who put that idea into your head?”