"That's right, Mark. Nothing. Not if he's been properly conditioned. He can't even hate his wife in the first place. That's one of the reasons compulsory conditioning came in.
"But back before that, he did something: He struck out; he over-reacted; he kicked the dog instead of his wife."
I didn't say anything. I was shaking too hard.
Celeste said softly, "Could that be you in that picture, Mark? Could you be hating one thing and striking another?"
Spasmodically, I drew up my knees and hugged my arms round them—burying my face, squeezing my eyes tight shut in a vain, desperate effort to blot out the room, and Celeste, and the things she said.
Only they wouldn't blot out, because they were inside of me, too, churning and roiling and spinning round in my brain. I had a queer, detached feeling, as if I were two rather than one, and one of those two was a great, yawning, black pit, and the other hung on the brink, ready to cast himself in.
That was how close I came to madness in that moment.
Then, abruptly, the moment passed. With a curse, I sat up straight, my mood gone suddenly savage.
Celeste's eyes distended. She started to draw away.
I caught her wrist fast; jerked her back. "Where do you think you're going?"