When Doctor Meyer Isaacson had finished speaking, that face had been a still but searching question; and almost immediately a question had come from the red lips.
"Is there absolutely no unhealthy condition of body such as might be expected to produce low spirits? You see how medically I speak!"
"None whatever. You are not even gouty, and three-quarters, at least, of my patients are gouty in some form or other."
Mrs. Chepstow frowned.
"Then what would you advise me to do?" she asked. "Shall I go to a priest? Shall I go to a philosopher? Shall I go to a Christian Science temple? Or do you think a good dose of the 'New Theology' would benefit me?"
She spoke satirically, yet Doctor Isaacson felt as if he heard, far off, faintly behind the satire, the despair of the materialist, against whom, in certain moments, all avenues of hope seem inexorably closed. He looked at Mrs. Chepstow, and there was a dawning of pity in his eyes as he answered: "How can I advise you?"
"How indeed? And yet--and that's a curious thing--you look as if you could."
"If you are really a convinced materialist, an honest atheist--"
"I am."
"Well, then it would be useless to advise you to seek priests or to go to Christian Science temples. I can only tell you that your complaint is not a complaint of the body."
"Then is it a complaint of the soul? That's a bore, because I don't happen to believe in the soul, and I do believe very much in the body."
"I wonder what exactly you mean when you say you don't believe in the soul."
"I mean that I don't believe there is in human beings anything mysterious which can live unless the body is living, anything that doesn't die simultaneously with the body. Of course there is something that we call mental, that likes and dislikes, loves and hates, and so on."
"And cannot that something be depressed by misfortune?"
"I did not say I had had any misfortune."
"Nor did I say so. Let us put it this way then--cannot that something be depressed?"
"To a certain degree, of course. But keep your body in perfect health, and you ought to be immune from extreme depression. And I believe you are immune. Frankly, Doctor Meyer Isaacson, I don't think you are right. I am sure something is out of order in my body. There must be some pressure somewhere, some obscure derangement of the nerves, something radically wrong."
"Try another doctor. Try a nerve specialist--a hypnotist, if you like: Hinton Morris, Scalinger, or Powell Burnham; I fear I cannot help you."