“I see. And why is that?”

“It’s a very long and complicated story.”

“Yes. It usually is.”

“I’m not a homosexual, if that’s what you are suggesting.”

“I am not suggesting that. If there were easy and quick answers, psychiatry would not be very hard work.”

“My father was extremely fond of women.”

“Are you fond of women?”

“I have a very high regard for women.”

“That is not what I asked.”

“I like them well enough.”

“Well enough for what?”

“To get along pleasantly with them. I know a lot of women.”

“Have you any women friends?”

“Well—in a way. They aren’t usually interested in the things I like to talk about.”

“I see. Have you ever been in love?”

“In love? Oh, certainly.”

“Deeply in love?”

“Yes.”

“Have you had sexual intercourse with women?”

“With a woman.”

“When last?”

“It would be—let me think for a moment—December 26, 1945.”

“A very lawyer-like answer. But—nearly twenty-three years ago. How old were you?”

“Seventeen.”

“Was it with the person with whom you were deeply in love?”

“No, no; certainly not!”

“With a prostitute?”

“Certainly not.”

“We seem to be approaching a painful area. Your answers are very brief, and not up to your usual standard of phrasing.”

“I am answering all your questions, I think.”

“Yes, but your very full flow of explanation and detail has dried up. And our hour is drying up, as well. So there is just time to tell you that next day we should take another course. Until now we have been clearing the ground, so to speak. I have been trying to discover what kind of man you are, and I hope you have been discovering something of what I am, as well. We are not really launched on analysis, because I have said little and really have not helped you at all. If we are to go on—and the time is very close when you must make that decision—we shall have to go deeper, and if that works, we shall then go deeper still, but we shall not continue in this extemporaneous way. Just before you go, do you think that by leaving you nothing in his will except this possibility of money for your children, your father was punishing you—that in his own terms he was telling you he didn’t love you?”

“Yes.”

“And you care whether he loved you or not?”

“Must it be called love?”

“It was your own word.”

“It’s a very emotional term. I cared whether he thought I was a worthy person—a man—a proper person to be his son.”

“Isn’t that love?”

“Love between father and son isn’t something that comes into society nowadays. I mean, the estimate a man makes of his son is in masculine terms. This business of love between father and son sounds like something in the Bible.”

“The patterns of human feeling do not change as much as many people suppose. King David’s estimate of his rebellious son Absalom was certainly in masculine terms. But I suppose you recall David’s lament when Absalom was slain?”