Page:Man's Country (1923).pdf/295

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.

some guardedly; some he did not interpret, causing the narrators a certain feeling of discomfort as wondering what it might be they had unwittingly revealed that was so terrible it might not be stirred into the potpourri.

At first every one was vastly entertained, and then some were thoughtful and reserved and introspective or restless, as if they heard skeletons rattling or had unintentionally submitted themselves to the disclosures of an X-ray eye and would be ill at ease until they would wriggle out of range of this blazing searchlight of the under soul.

But one cannot run away from a dinner, and one cannot sit forever dumb. Presently, when those with misgivings in their breast perceived that to fall suddenly quiet was to confess some vague sense of guilt, everybody began laughing and chatting and bantering each other and the doctor. But a skilled psychoanalyst is a dangerous man with whom to bandy wits. Where the subject trenches on his special field, he is sure to suspect if not actually discern the truth which so often lies behind the jest.

As the evening wore on, the doctor gathered an astonishing amount of information about these perfectly respectable people; things their neighbors had never been permitted to know; in a few instances, things they did not even know about themselves. One guest in particular ex-