"Very well then," said Dick, his voice trembling a little in answer to that gentler tone, "you let her alone, can't you? Nan's a different girl when she's with you. It's no use denying it. You do hypnotize her." "Dick," said Raven, "that's a beastly thing to say. If you mean it to be as offensive as it sounds, you ought to be booted for it." "Oh," said Dick, with a simple certainty in what he knew, "I don't blame you as I should any other fellow that wasn't going through what you are. That would be a simple matter to deal with: a chap that knew what he was doing. You don't, old man. You may not know it, but you don't." "For the land's sake!" said Raven, echoing Charlotte, "And what, again for the land's sake, am I going through?" "You know," said Dick uneasily because he did hope to avoid putting it into words. "_Cafard._" Raven had one of his moments of silence, getting hold of himself, taking the matter in, with its forgotten enormity. "So," he said, "you've adopted your mother's word for it. I hadn't realized that." "Oh, Mum's no such fool," said Dick. "She may be an aggravation and a curse--I'll own that--but she's up to date. Why, Jack, anybody that ever knew you'd know you're not yourself." "No," thought Raven, "few of us are ourselves. We've been through the War, my son. So have you; but you didn't have such a brittle old world inside you to try to put together again after it was smashed. Your inner world was in the making. Whatever you might feel in its collision with the runaway planet of the mad human mind, it could right itself; its atoms might cohere." "You needn't think," proceeded Dick generously if a trifle too magnificently, "I can't see. There's a lot of things I see that don't bear talking about. I've pitched into you about Nan, but you needn't suppose I don't know it's all a matter of hidden complexes." Again recurring to Charlotte in this moment of need, Raven reflected that he didn't know whether he was afoot or a-horseback. "You don't mind, I hope," he said, with humility before this perfectly equipped intelligence, "explaining a little." "Why," said Dick, "there's all your previous life. It's a case of inhibition. There was Miss Anne." "Stop," said Raven, his curiosity over the boy's mind dying in a crash. "Stop right there, Dick; you're making a fool of yourself. Now we'll go to bed." He got up and waited, and Dick, sulkily, rose too. "You needn't think," he began, and Raven broke in: "You needn't think I shall stand another word of your half-baked psycho-deviltries. You can believe what you like. It'll harm nobody but yourself. But you don't talk it here, or out you go. Now!"