Philip Curtiss

“ But the doctor saw that he was merely going to repeat the same formula and broke in with one of his own suggestions which seemed to Bellsmith almost clairvoyant.
"But even there you find the same restlessness," he suggested. "You face a whole roomful of books yet cannot find one that you feel the slightest desire to read. You sit down with two or three books at once, read a page in one, look at the pictures in another, until you have four or five of them open on the table beside you. The book you haven't got is always the one you want. ”

“ The doctor nodded gravely, and at last Bellsmith had found the gates of confession.
"That's typical of how I spend half my time," he hurried on angrily, "but that's not the worst of it by any means. For one thing, I seem to have, these days, a curious horror of being called on to make the simplest decision. I want to put everything off even the most trivial things. I hate to face a day knowing that I have the slightest obligation. I dread hearing my butler coming to ask me what I will have for dinner. ”

“ I am not interested in anything myself, and it irritates me to see other people interested in anything. That is hardly the proper state for a man to be in."
He looked up fearfully to see how his amateurish and faltering explanation had been received but the doctor was nodding sympathetically. Encouraged, Bellsmith went on:
"If that state were merely temporary, I should consider it just weariness or plain, old-fashioned boredom, but I don't know whether you will believe, doctor, the lengths to which it has gone." ”

“ You formed the habit of going late to the dances and spending your time largely at the smoking-room door. You began to look eagerly for fresh faces, for new girls from out of town; and then you found even those to be a dull lot. You got to the point where you would spend fifteen minutes making up your mind to ask any special girl to dance, and then, the moment you had asked her, you wished that you hadn't.
"The same way with dinners. There was a time when a formal dinner seemed like a chapter out of a novel, an act in a play. ”

“ I seem to be in a chronic state of utter indifference. I continue to live in the world, but, for all practical purposes, the world for me has ceased to exist. Everything, big and little, that other people are doing, seems to me silly and futile. ”

“ It is the hardest thing for me to bring myself to answer a letter. When I receive a letter that calls for an answer I will put it in a certain pigeonhole in my desk and feel somehow that that disposes of it for the time being. My desk is crammed with such pigeon-holes. ”

“ Any hobbies or studies?"
"Music," replied Bellsmith. "I am very much interested in music. At least I used to be."
"Used to be?" queried the doctor. "It seems to me that you are using that phrase with a dangerous frequency. What happened to your music?"
Bellsmith shrugged. "Oh, I don't know. I just seem to have drifted out of it. I went into it deeply once. It ran in the family. My father had the most accurate ear I have ever known. I even composed a whole light opera once and a couple of suites. But I seem to have lost heart about it."
"Shall I tell you why?" retorted the doctor. ”

“ I seem to have almost a physical dread of being lured into engagements. I will promise anything to anybody, so long as it is left vague and far in the future, but when any one tries to pin me down to a definite day I suddenly become reluctant and hostile. ”

“ I never go to New York now unless I have to. They 're always changing the methods of doing things down there, and I have a horror of doing things wrong. I hate to ask questions, doctor. I can't bear to stand in line. If I can't get tickets for the theater at my hotel I don't go at all. I will walk from Forty-second Street to the Park rather than try to get on one of those damned surface-cars. They always seem to stop at a different corner every time I go to New York."
The doctor smiled. "You don't suppose that you are alone in those particulars, do you?"
Bellsmith grinned, ruefully. ”

“ The doctor sat for a moment in thought.
"Do you mean by that," he began tentatively, "that you have a distaste for people in general?"
"No," replied Bellsmith, slowly, "it is very funny about that. I am horribly lonely. I still seem eager to be with people, but I never seem to find just the right people."
"There are no such people in the world," laughed Dr. ”

“ Originally the reason for that was that the fireplace would not draw with the doors in any other position."
"In the beginning there usually is a reason for most of these things," commented the doctor.
"But now," continued Bellsmith, "I have to have the doors that way even where there is no fire. If some one comes into the room and leaves one of the other doors open I am perfectly miserable. I fuss and fidget until I can get up and shut it. Before I light a cigarette I always have to tap it three times on my thumb nail, even though some one may be waiting with a lighted match. ”