"Well," conceded the analyst with a shrug to excuse his own inadequate powers of description. Then he said, "Do not be surprised at going crazy, as you put it, Mr. Gish--may I call you Phil? It is the rule rather than the exception these days, though your admitting it is a bit out of the ordinary. For a full century now Americans have been living in one of those ages of collective madness and herd delusion, comparable only to the Dutch tulip mania, the witchcraft dread, the dancing madness, Trotskyism, and the Crusades. Until 1950 ours might have been called the Automobile Mania, but now the imagination can only grope for a name--I'm writing an unpopular book on the subject, you see. Not that this current social madness is a deep secret or anything to be startled at. What other results could have been expected when American society began to overvalue on the one hand security, censorship, an imagined world-saving idealism and self-sacrifice in war, and on the other hand insatiable hunger for possessions, fiercely competitive aggressiveness, sadistic male belligerence, contempt for parents and the state, and a fantastically overstimulated sexuality?" The analyst's voice rose stridently and his eyes popped, as if there were a personal element in his indignation. But the next moment he was his merry professional self. "Now, Phil, let's examine how this sick society has sickened you. It may surprise you but we shan't be using any such modern techniques as electrosleep, deep brain photography or situational therapy complete with a bottle, a blanket and a blonde love-robot. We shall simply do what our great-grandfathers would have done--talk. Feel perfectly at ease. This desk is designed so we can be together, yet need not look at each other. Care to smoke? Good! Do! Now begin at the beginning. Tell me the story of your life." Phil swallowed. "Excuse me, Dr. Romadka," he said, "but I'd rather not do that right now. I want to tell you about an experience, I mean, hallucination, I just had that convinced me I'm crazy, and then I want you to tell me about it. You know: interpret it or psych it or something." The analyst shrugged happily. "As good a beginning as any. Go ahead." So Phil told him what he had seen through the quarter-darkened window. He found himself ashamedly admitting under the analyst's expert rein-twitching how he had long used his own window as an observation post, and when he got to describing the hallucination itself he found himself trembling with restimulated terror, but he did finally get it all out.