“It isn’t we who cure,” explained the other man patiently. “We no more cure a man than does the surgeon who sets a broken bone. We just try, like him, to get things straightened out so they can cure themselves. Tell me about her husband, who has disappeared.” Dick recounted Guy Vanton’s story. It was a long recital but the specialist seemed interested. At the end Dick asked: “What do you make of it?” “It is a bad case,” thoughtfully, “but it isn’t hopeless. It might even come out all right. I’m afraid not, though. If she--if his wife could not straighten things out for him there isn’t much likelihood that anybody else can. She must be a very fine woman. And they genuinely loved each other. No doubt of that. Love--and children. They are the ultimate satisfaction of most men and women, but not of all. I imagine that he is an exception to the general rule. There was something else that he hadn’t got. Perhaps he will find it.” “A fine woman.... Love--and children ... the ultimate satisfaction.” The words struck something in Richard Hand. He looked up suddenly and spoke in a harsh voice: “I suppose if I had got her and if--if they were my children...?” The adviser looked at him gravely. “I think there is no doubt about it,” he answered. They sat there in the gathering twilight for some time in a silence fraught with the pain of a deep revelation. Richard Hand struggled with the thing that stood revealed to him and within him. After a while he said, in words that seemed to choke him: “But what shall I do? What--what _can_ I do--about it--now?” “Look the thing full in the face, as you are doing now, and conquer it,” the other counselled. After a pause he went on to explain: “You love her, you have always loved her. And because you love her you will love her children, as a part of her. As long as you suppressed your love for her, as long as you refused to acknowledge it even to yourself, so long it continued to punish you in other ways. It did not so act upon you as to prevent you doing good work and profiting by it; but when you had done great work and had profited by it this suppressed longing stepped in and robbed you of the reward you had earned by destroying all the beauty and meaning of life for you, by turning your victories to ashes in your mouth, by making everything you were doing or had done or might do, pointless and futile. For you the final satisfaction would have lain exclusively in doing all these things for her. “Why haven’t you done them for her? Why don’t you? You can. You can make her yours and her children your own. I’m not, of course, suggesting anything disgraceful or dishonourable. I am suggesting that you look the truth in the face like an honest man--though you haven’t been intentionally dishonest with yourself. Outward conventions are responsible for most of the ingrowing minds. Look the truth in the face like an honest man and fight the good fight like a brave man.