"He wished for nothing," said Kitty. "He was fond of us, and he had a lot of money."
"Ah, but he did!" countered the doctor, gleefully. He seemed to be enjoying it all. "Quite obviously he has forgotten his life here because he is discontented with it. What clearer proof could you need than the fact you were just telling me when these ladies came in—that the reason the War Office didn't wire to you when he was wounded was that he had forgotten to register his address? Don't you see what that means?"
"Forgetfulness," shrugged Kitty. "He isn't businesslike." She had always nourished a doubt as to whether Chris was really, as she put it, practical, and his income and his international reputation weighed nothing as against his evident inability to pick up pieces at sales.
"One forgets only those things that one wants to forget. It's our business to find out why he wanted to forget this life."
"He can remember quite well when he is hypnotized," she said obstructively. She had quite ceased to glow.
"Oh, hypnotism's a silly trick. It releases the memory of a dissociated personality which can't be related—not possibly in such an obstinate case as this—to the waking personality. I'll do it by talking to him. Getting him to tell his dreams." He beamed at the prospect. "But you—it would be such a help if you would give me any clue to this discontent."
"I tell you," said Kitty, "he was not discontented till he went mad."
He caught the glint of her rising temper.
"Ah," he said, "madness is an indictment not of the people one lives with, only of the high gods. If there was anything, it's evident that it was not your fault." A smile sugared it, and knowing that where he had to flatter his dissecting hand had not an easy task, he turned to me, whose general appearance suggests that flattery is not part of my daily diet. "You, Miss Baldry, you've known him longest."
"Nothing and everything was wrong," I said at last. "I've always felt it." A sharp movement of Kitty's body confirmed my deep, old suspicion that she hated me.