"No. Perhaps I never shall. When the memory comes back I feel--sick.
It is even worse in retrospect. When it was my daily life, I lived
it. But now it seems impossible. Am I getting more cowardly, do you
think?"
Spence smiled. "I hope you are," he told her. "When you lived under
a daily strain you were probably keyed to a sort of harmony with it.
Now you are getting more normal. Life is a thing of infinite
adjustment."
"You think I could get 'adjusted' again if I had to?"
"You won't have to. Why discuss it?"
"Because it puzzles me. Why do I mind things more now than I did? I
used to feel quite casual about father's oddities. They never seemed
to exactly matter. But now," naively, "I would so much like to have
a father like other people."
"That is more normal, too."
"I suppose," she went on, as if following her own thoughts, "what Li
Ho calls the moon-devil is really a disease. Have you ever told Dr.
John about father, Benis? What did he say?" The professor fidgeted.
"Oh, nothing much. He couldn't, you know, without more data. But he
thinks his periodical spells may be a kind of masked epilepsy. There
are some symptoms which look like it. The way the attacks come on,
with restlessness and that peculiar steely look in the eye, the
unreasoning anger and especially the--er--general indications." The
professor came to a stammering end, suddenly remembering that she
did not know that last and worst of the moon-devil symptoms.
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