structural injury I don't mind surgery. But except for any little
mischief your amateur drugging may have done you do not seem to me to
be either sick or injured. You've no trouble either of structure or
material. You are--worried--ill in your mind, and otherwise perfectly
sound. It's the current of your thoughts, fermenting. If the trouble is
in the mental sphere, why go out of the mental sphere for a treatment?
Talk and thought; these are your remedies. Cool deliberate thought.
You're unravelled. You say it yourself. Drugs will only make this or
that unravelled strand behave disproportionately. You don't want that.
You want to take stock of yourself as a whole--find out where you stand.

"But the Fuel Commission?"

"Is it sitting now?"

"Adjourned till after Whitsuntide. But there's heaps of work to be done.

"Still," he added, "this is my one chance of any treatment."

The doctor made a little calculation. "Three weeks.... It's scarcely
time enough to begin."

"You're certain that no regimen of carefully planned and chosen
tonics--"

"Dismiss the idea. Dismiss it." He decided to take a plunge. "I've just
been thinking of a little holiday for myself. But I'd like to see you
through this. And if I am to see you through, there ought to be some
sort of beginning now. In this three weeks. Suppose...."