..."
Sir Richmond looked with quick curiosity at his companion. "You have
avoided them!"
"They don't attract me."
"They repel you?"
"For me," said the doctor, "for any friendliness, a woman must be
modest.... My habits of thought are old-fashioned, I suppose, but
the mere suggestion about a woman that there were no barriers, no
reservation, that in any fashion she might more than meet me half
way..."
His facial expression completed his sentence.
"Now I wonder," whispered Sir Richmond, and hesitated for a moment
before he carried the great research into the explorer's country.
"You are afraid of women?" he said, with a smile to mitigate the
impertinence.
"I respect them."
"An element of fear."
"Well, I am afraid of them then. Put it that way if you like. Anyhow I
do not let myself go with them. I have never let myself go."
"You lose something. You lose a reality of insight."
There was a thoughtful interval.
"Having found so excellent a friend," said the doctor, "why did you ever
part from her?"
Sir Richmond seemed indisposed to answer, but Dr. Martineau's
face remained slantingly interrogative. He had found the effective
counterattack and he meant to press it. "I was jealous of her," Sir
Richmond admitted. "I couldn't stand that side of it.
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