“Persuade him somehow that he’s got shell-shock, and to consult me about it.” For a moment, the doctor forgot his son-in-law: neurasthenia and its treatment lay very near his professional heart, and that heart was being steadily broken by War Office neglect. “Two years, I’ve been at them,” he burst out, “two years! And they’re only just beginning to realize that a wound in the mind can be as fatal as a wound in the body. Meanwhile, God knows how many brave men are being tortured.” By now, they had reached the paddock-gate, stood gazing down on Sunflowers. The mellow house behind the leafless walnut-tree looked a veritable English home of peace; smoke spired lazily from its tall chimneys; its square windows glinted welcome. They heard the children’s voices shouting, “Daddy! Daddy!” saw Peter striding, gun over shoulder, to the front door. “He’s been to see Francis again,” said Patricia. “Agoraphobia,” thought Heron Baynet, “the Fear of Open Spaces. I wonder what particular kind of horror he sees every time he goes down across that little bit of meadow-land.” But Patricia’s mind had suddenly remembered Francis; Francis, alone, night after night, in that quaint up-and-down cottage, firelight glowing sombrely on panelled walls, Prout and his “female” pottering in the red-tiled kitchen. “Pater,” she said suddenly, “supposing you’re wrong in your diagnosis?” “I’m never wrong about these things,” he answered, purposely boastful. “Then tell me what’s the matter with Francis. Even I can see _he’s_ not normal.” “Normal!”—Heron Baynet pulled a cigarette-case from his over-coat pocket, extracted and lit a Gianaclis—“of course he’s normal. That’s his trouble. A normal man trying to live an abnormal life.” “It isn’t abnormal to live in the country.” “No, it isn’t abnormal to live in the country, _but_”—for the second time that afternoon, Heron Baynet laughed and his daughter blushed—“but it is abnormal, especially for a man of Francis Gordon’s temperament, to live there like a monk.” “But he doesn’t even work, pater,” protested Patricia. “Why should he?” said her father. “He hasn’t got anybody to work _for_.” Thoughtfully, they passed into the house. PART TWENTY-EIGHT WOMANCRAFT § 1 After Heron Baynet’s departure, the influence of his disclosures became infinitely disturbing to his daughter’s mind. Inheriting all the prejudices of ignorant generations—the generations who regarded nervous disorders as akin to lunacy, and made torture-chambers of our asylums—Patricia found it almost impossible to realize Peter’s condition. It needed all her reasoning power, all her affection, to conquer those prejudices, to stifle her instinct of revulsion from the abnormal.