He laid the letter on the table and eyed it sideways as he lit his pipe. Then he went to the telephone and called up Norma. He said he was sorry, but that he wouldn't be able to come that evening for bridge. Norma, as she herself had observed, did not suffer from inhibitions. Her emotions found easy expression, and her emotion on this occasion was disappointment mingled with anger. She expressed it freely over the telephone. Lisburn hung up the receiver sharply. Self-expression was all very well, he thought; but there was such a thing as having no self-control. It was necessary for him to have a calm and receptive mind in order to be of any assistance to this child who was coming to consult him. He must make a mental picture of her personality and recall her gestures, her vocabulary. Soon after eight he heard her step on the piazza and went to the door himself. She entered with that timid, conscious, apologetic manner which had become so familiar to him in his patients. It seemed as if she would have liked to make fun of herself for coming if only she had been less frightened at finding herself there. The hand she gave him shook. He drew forward a deep comfortable chair for her. "Now tell me everything you can think of," he said; "your own way; I won't interrupt." She drew an uncertain breath. "Well, I didn't think anything about it--you know how casually I spoke the other day--but now I find it is beginning to affect my conduct. I find I cannot bring myself to get into an automobile. I have never driven a car myself, but I have always enjoyed driving with other people; but now-- This dream of mine is about a car." She described the dream at great length, though it was strangely lacking in incident. It was merely that she was driving a small car of her own--a very pretty white car with a good deal of blue about it. She was driving along a wide street, and suddenly the car began to skid, slowly at first and then faster and faster; and though her agony became extreme and she turned the steering wheel more and more, she could do nothing--the car made straight for the bushes, where some terrific but unseen and unknown object was lurking. He made her go over the details of it two or three times. The shade of blue was about the same shade as the dress she was wearing, but he elicited very little more. She could not, she said, get any clew as to what was hidden in the bushes, except that it was something she was horribly afraid of. "And yet," he said, "you go toward it?" "Yes; but entirely against my will, Mr. Lisburn." "You're sure you go against your will?" Her voice was almost hysterical as she protested, "Yes--yes, indeed!" "And yet you go?" "No, Mr. Lisburn, the car goes." "Don't you think you and the car are the same?"