“I wonder why that is,” Stockstill said, making notes.

“Presumably, you would know, if you’re competent at all. The woman who recommended you said you were exceptionally able.” Mr. Tree eyed him, as if seeing no sign of’ ability as yet.

“I think I had better get a background history from you,” Stockstill said. “I see that Bonny Keller recommended me. How is Bonny? I haven’t seen her since last April or so… did her husband give up his job with that rural grammar school as he was talking about?”

“I did not come here to discuss George and Bonny Keller,” Mr. Tree said. “I am desperately pressed, Doctor. They may decide to complete their destruction of me any time now; this harassment has gone on for so long now that—” He broke off. “Bonny thinks I’m ill, and I have great respect for her.” His tone was low, almpst inaudible. “So I said I’d come here, at least once.”

“Are the Kellers still living up in West Marin?”

Mr. Tree nodded.

“I have a summer place up there,” Stockstill said. “I’m a sailing buff; I like to get out on Tomales Bay every chance I get. Have you ever tried sailing?”

“No.”

“Tell me when you were born and where.”

Mr. Tree said, “In Budapest, in 1934.”

Doctor Stockstill, skillfully questioning, began to obtain in detail the life-history of his patient, fact by fact. It was essential for what he had to do: first diagnose and then, if possible, heal. Analysis and then therapy. A man known all over the world who had delusions that strangers were staring at him—how in this case could reality be sorted out from lantasy? WThat was the frame of reference which would distinguish them one from the other?

It would be so easy, Stockstill realize, to find pathology here. So easy—and so tempting. A man this hated… I share their opinion, he said to himself, the they that Bluthgeld—or rather Tree—talks about. After all, I’m part of society, too, part of the civilization menaced by the grandiose, extravagant miscalculations of this man. It could have been—could someday be—my children blighted because this man had the arrogance to assume that he could not err.