John Collier Spring painting

When I got drunk I could sleep it off and wake in tolerable ; Roger could not; in the past we had often discussed this alcoholic insomnia of his and found no remedy for it except temperance; after telephoning to me he had gone out with Basil; he looked a wreck next morning.
“It’s extraordinary,” he said. “I’ve got absolutely no feeling about this baby at all. I kept telling myself all these last months that when I actually saw it, all manner of deep-rooted, atavistic emotions would come surging up. I was all set for a deep spiritual experience. They brought the thing in and showed it to me, I looked at it and waited—and nothing at all happened. It was just like the first time one takes hashish—or being ‘confirmed’ at school.”
“I knew a man who had five children,” I said. “He felt just as you do until the fifth. Then he was suddenly overcome with love; he bought a thermometer and kept taking its temperature when the nurse was out of the room. I daresay it’s a habit, like hashish.”
“I don’t feel as if I had anything to do with it. It’s as though they showed me Lucy’s appendix or a tooth they’d pulled out of her.”
“What’s it like? I mean, it isn’t a freak or anything?”