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itous kind. That’s why I came down to meet you on a very
busy day. I want you to come into my office and talk a long
time before you see her. In fact, I sent her into Zurich to
do errands.’ His voice was tense with enthusiasm. ‘In fact,
I sent her without a nurse, with a less stable patient. I’m
intensely proud of this case, which I handled, with your ac-
cidental assistance.’
The car had followed the shore of the Zurichsee into a
fertile region of pasture farms and low hills, steepled with
châlets. The sun swam out into a blue sea of sky and sud-
denly it was a Swiss valley at its best—pleasant sounds and
murmurs and a good fresh smell of health and cheer.
Professor Dohmler’s plant consisted of three old build-
ings and a pair of new ones, between a slight eminence and
the shore of the lake. At its founding, ten years before, it had
been the first modern clinic for mental illness; at a casual
glance no layman would recognize it as a refuge for the bro-
ken, the incomplete, the menacing, of this world, though
two buildings were surrounded with vine-softened walls of
a deceptive height. Some men raked straw in the sunshine;
here and there, as they rode into the grounds, the car passed
the white flag of a nurse waving beside a patient on a path.
After conducting Dick to his office, Franz excused him-
self for half an hour. Left alone Dick wandered about the
room and tried to reconstruct Franz from the litter of his
desk, from his books and the books of and by his father and
grandfather; from the Swiss piety of a huge claret-colored
photo of the former on the wall. There was smoke in the
room; pushing open a French window, Dick let in a cone

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