He went back further than I expected.
"His relations with his father and mother, now?"
"His father was old when he was born, and always was a little jealous of him. His mother was not his sort. She wanted a stupid son who would have been satisfied with shooting."
He laid down a remark very softly, like a hunter setting a snare.
"He turned, then, to sex with a peculiar need."
It was Margaret who spoke, shuffling her feet awkwardly under her chair.
"Yes, he was always dependent."
We gaped at her who said this of our splendid Chris, and I saw that she was not as she had been. There was a directness of speech, a straight stare, that was for her a frenzy. "Doctor," she said, her mild voice roughened, "what's the use of talking? You can't cure him,"—she caught her lower lip with her teeth and fought back from the brink of tears,—"make him happy, I mean. All you can do is to make him ordinary."
"I grant you that's all I do," he said. It queerly seemed as though he was experiencing the relief one feels on meeting an intellectual equal. "It's my profession to bring people from various outlying districts of the mind to the normal. There seems to be a general feeling it's the place where they ought to be. Sometimes I don't see the urgency myself."
She continued without joy: