Page:The Ball and the Cross.djvu/292

“It is the way he talks,” said MacIan, almost indifferently; “but he says rummier things than that. He says that a man’s doctor ought to decide what woman he marries; and he says that children ought not to be brought up by their parents, because a physical partiality will then distort the judgment of the educator.”

“Oh, dear!” said Turnbull, laughing, “you have certainly come across a pretty bad case, and incidentally proved your own. I suppose some men do lose their wits through science as through love and other good things.”

“And he says,” went on MacIan, monotonously, “that he cannot see why any one should suppose that a triangle is a three-sided figure. He says that on some higher plane——”

Turnbull leapt to his feet as by an electric shock. “I never could have believed,” he cried, “that you had humour enough to tell a lie. You’ve gone a bit too far, old man, with your little joke. Even in a lunatic asylum there can’t be anybody who, having thought about the matter, thinks that a triangle has not got three sides. If he exists he must be a new era in human psychology. But he doesn’t exist.”

“I will go and fetch him,” said MacIan,