It sounded awful, the firm way he said it, like teeth or appendixes which must be extracted. But Mrs. Hilary knew it wouldn't be like that really, but delightful and luxurious, more like a Turkish bath.
"You must have a course," he told her. "You are an obvious case for a course of treatment. St. Mary's Bay? Excellent. There is a practising psycho-analyst there now. You should have an hour's treatment twice a week, to be really effective.... You would prefer a man, I take it?"
He shot his eyes at her for a moment, in statement, not in enquiry. Well he knew how much she would prefer a man. She murmured assent. He rose. The hour was over.
"How much will the course be?" she asked.
"A guinea an hour, Dr. Cradock charges. He is very cheap."
"Yes, I see. I must think it over. And you?"
He told her his fee, and she blenched, but paid it. She was not rich, but it had been worth while. It was a beginning. It had opened the door into a new and richer life. St. Mary's Bay was illumined in her thoughts, instead of being drab and empty as before. Sublimated complexes twinkled over it like stars. Freed libido poured electrically about it. And Dr. Cradock, she felt, would be more satisfactory as a doctor than this man, who affected her with a faint nausea when he looked at her, though he seldom did so.
2
Windover too was illumined. She could watch almost calmly Neville talking to Grandmama, wheeling her round the garden to look at the borders, for Grandmama was a great gardener.
Then Jim came down for a week-end, and it was as if the sun had risen on Surrey. He sat with Mrs. Hilary in the arbour. She told him about Dr. Evans and the other psycho-analyst doctor at St. Mary's Bay. He frowned over Dr. Evans, who lived in the same street as he did.