In a little while he found himself, ridiculously, sobbing. He could not define the passionate mixture of resentment, jealousy, shame, and even hatred, that overwhelmed him. He could not understand himself. A psycho-analyst, no doubt would have found a name for his state of mind, describing it as an “Œdipus complex”; but Edwin had never heard of psycho-analysis, and only knew that his mind was ruthlessly torn by passions beyond the control of reason. He made a valiant attempt to think rationally. Primarily, he admitted, it wasn’t his business to decide whether his father should marry again or remain a widower. His father was a free agent with responsibilities towards Edwin that were rapidly vanishing and would soon be ended. He couldn’t even suggest that this new marriage would be the ruin of any vital comradeship between them, for the hopes of this ideal state that he had once cherished, had not been realised during the last few years. There was no reason why his father’s marriage should affect him personally, or even financially, for he had never reckoned on the least paternal support when once he should be qualified. There was not even the least suggestion that his father was physically unsuitable for the married state, for there was no reason why he should not live for many years to come. There were actually valid arguments, that Edwin could not dispute, in favour of the plan—such as Mr. Ingleby’s loneliness, soon to be increased, and the discomfort that he had suffered as an elderly widower at the hands of a series of inefficient house-keepers. From every point of view the world would be justified in concluding that he was doing the correct and obvious thing. Why, then, should Edwin lie on his bed in the dark wetting his pillow with tears, and sick with shame? No reason could assuage his suffering. However calmly he tried to consider the matter, the thought of his mother rose up in his mind; a vision of her, beautiful and pathetic, and indefinitely wronged, came to reinforce his indignation. He lit a candle and gazed for a long time at her photograph, the one that he had always kept in his desk at St. Luke’s and scarcely noticed for the last three years; and though he knew that she was dead and presumably beyond the reach of any human passion, the sight of her features filled him more than ever with this unconscionable resentment so devastating in its intensity. The portrait took him back to the tenderness that he remembered at the time of her death, and particularly that strange moment when he and his father had knelt together in the little room across the landing. The smell of Sanitas. . . .