“Come, now, doctor!” interrupted the convalescent, “travelling is a necessity. As you so aptly said, we want to break the monotony of the day—to get out of the customary environment.”
“That’s just what I want to designate as the chief symptom of the neurosis of our time. Everyone wants to get away from the customary environments. Everybody makes attempts at flight. Whether they succeed depends upon other social factors. Why is the customary environment repugnant to you?”
“Because I crave a change. I do not know why. But I have an instinctive longing for it.”
“There you have it, my dear. It’s just as I said: It’s a compulsive idea. The flight from one’s environment, from one’s home, from one’s furniture, is the same as the flight from one’s house. To me every piece of furniture that I have used a long time has become so dear and so much a part of myself that I do not like to give them away and can only with difficulty part with them. And if I were to come into possession of a vast fortune to-day I could not renounce these dear associates to whom I am bound by so many memories. With all their shortcomings and modesty they are a thousand times dearer to me than the most beautiful English or secessionist furnishings. I’ll confess that in these matters I am not at all modern. For the moderns are glad when they can change something, and so they change their furniture, their carpets, their pictures, etc. About every ten years there is a change in the fashions and your housewife cannot bear not to be in style. One day you enter her house and you find new rooms. And just as the furnishings in the house are changed from time to time, so the residence too must be changed frequently—in fact, everything that can be changed is changed: The servants, the family physician, the music teacher, and, where it is possible, the husband and even the wife.”
The young woman reflected a little. “There is much truth in what you say. It is in fact a tremendous flight that we see enacted everywhere about us, a flight from oneself and from one’s environment. If I were to judge by my own feelings I should say that this fleeing has its origin in our life’s needs. We women all have a large ‘Nora’ element in us and are waiting for the ‘miracle.’ Inasmuch as we cannot find it at home we look for it elsewhere. Believe me, doctor, most women do not fall because of sensual appetites. No! they fall because they crave for some experience. We experience too little. The monotony of the days asphyxiates us. And this great whirl of life, this senseless running after a change—as you call it—is only because our hearts are discontented, because our spirits are wrecked by the monotony and insipidity of our lives. Do you think that it will ever be different?”
“Why not, pray? Some day a great physician must arise, an apostle of human love, whose voice will pierce the whirl and who will be capable of opening man’s stupid eyes: A new religion would do it, a religion that would satisfy all of humanity’s longings, a religion of work and the joy of life. Our time is ripe for a Messiah. Whether he will come——.”
“Ah, he has come,” said the charming young woman, her face beaming. “For me you are the Messiah of domesticity! You have cured me of my flight neurosis. I shall stay home to-day, and as often as I can do so.”
The old doctor took his leave with animated steps. With the power of his words he had once again reformed a human being.
But his joy was short-lived. That afternoon, as he walked by a café on the main thoroughfare his eyes fell on a vivacious group within. And there he saw his recalcitrant patient who had evidently gone out only to get a chance to discuss thoroughly with her friends the theme: “The flight from the house.”