JAMES: Yes, or something. I don’t know. I can’t remember. That damned door shuts it all out. (Despairingly): Doctor, we can go on for a lifetime like this, I’ll never get through that door.

KREUZER: And when you came out again?

JAMES: I don’t believe I ever came out. Sometimes I think I’m still lying there.

KREUZER: Lying?

JAMES: Oh, it was only the first word that came. I’m tired, Doctor, and my mother will be here any moment now.

KREUZER: You are frightened of making an effort to remember. I can’t cure you. Perhaps there’s nothing to cure.

JAMES: What do you mean?

KREUZER: I can only cure the irrational, the exaggerated, the abnormal. If a man is melancholy because he’s lost his leg, I’m not called in. He has good reason.

JAMES: You think I may have reason?

KREUZER: Yes. But what happened behind that door to give you the reason—the mind boggles at that.

JAMES: So we give up? Right. It was my last fling, too.

KREUZER (apprehensively and sharply): Don’t be a bigger coward than you need be.

JAMES: Trying to make me angry, Doctor? You can’t. My plan needs courage.

KREUZER: I was just talking, Callifer, to make you talk. I never give a patient up.

JAMES: Has no one given you up?

KREUZER (after a pause, unwillingly): Yes, one.

JAMES: He got tired of it?

KREUZER: Yes.

JAMES: Did he find another cure?

KREUZER: Not what I can admit is a cure. Perhaps this may interest you. He killed himself.

JAMES: Oh. (The words have struck home.)

KREUZER: He was my son.

JAMES: I’m sorry.

KREUZER: He wouldn’t be treated by anyone else. I tried to make him, but he was afraid. He was never afraid of me. I had to go and tell his mother. We hadn’t met for years. She took it badly.

JAMES: How long ago?

KREUZER: Ten years. I swore then I’d never leave a case unfinished. Even if a patient tried to give me up. They often do.

Somewhere below, the front doorbell rings.

JAMES: My mother, Doctor Kreuzer.

KREUZER: Before I go— (He holds out his hand.)

JAMES: I don’t understand.

KREUZER: You acted very quickly. I suppose it was when I turned to telephone. I forgot to examine my desk before you left. My tablets, please.

JAMES: Suppose I won’t give them to you?

KREUZER: It’s not very important. I’m trying to save you from a stomach ache, that’s all. They’re not poisonous.

JAMES: Then why did you follow me here?

KREUZER: I couldn’t allow a patient to leave me ever again in that state of mind.

The door opens and Corner lets in Mrs. Callifer.

CORNER: Here’s your mother, Callifer. (He goes.)

JAMES (handing over the bottle): Here they are.

MRS. CALLIFER: James—

JAMES: Welcome, Mother.

MRS. CALLIFER: Is Anne here?