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‘There’s not much variety in treatment any more—of
course you try to find the right personality to handle a par-
ticular case.’
‘Dick, I don’t pretend to advise you or to know much
about it but don’t you think a change might be good for
her—to get out of that atmosphere of sickness and live in
the world like other people?’
‘But you were keen for the clinic,’ he reminded her. ‘You
told me you’d never feel really safe about her—‘
‘That was when you were leading that hermit’s life on the
Riviera, up on a hill way off from anybody. I didn’t mean to
go back to that life. I meant, for instance, London. The Eng-
lish are the best-balanced race in the world.’
‘They are not,’ he disagreed.
‘They are. I know them, you see. I meant it might be nice
for you to take a house in London for the spring season—I
know a dove of a house in Talbot Square you could get, fur-
nished. I mean, living with sane, well-balanced English
people.’
She would have gone on to tell him all the old propagan-
da stories of 1914 if he had not laughed and said:
‘I’ve been reading a book by Michael Arlen and if
that’s—‘
She ruined Michael Arlen with a wave of her salad
spoon.
‘He only writes about degenerates. I mean the worth-
while English.’
As she thus dismissed her friends they were replaced in
Dick’s mind only by a picture of the alien, unresponsive fac-

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