"
"Exactly.... After all it seems to me that your great trouble is not
in yourselves but in social institutions. Which haven't yet fitted
themselves to people like you two. It is the sense of uncertainty makes
her, as you say, adhesive. Nervously so. If we were indeed living in a
new age Instead of the moral ruins of a shattered one--"
"We can't alter the age we live in," said Sir Richmond a little testily.
"No. Exactly. But we CAN realize, in any particular situation, that it
is not the individuals to blame but the misfit of ideas and forms and
prejudices."
"No," said Sir Richmond, obstinately rejecting this pacifying
suggestion; "she could adapt herself. If she cared enough."
"But how?"
"She will not take the slightest trouble to adjust herself to the
peculiarities of our position.... She could be cleverer. Other women are
cleverer. Any other woman almost would be cleverer than she is."
"But if she was cleverer, she wouldn't be the genius she is. She would
just be any other woman."
"Perhaps she would," said Sir Richmond darkly and desperately. "Perhaps
she would. Perhaps it would be better if she was."
Dr. Martineau raised his eyebrows in a furtive aside.
"But here you see that it is that in my case, the fundamental
incompatibility between one's affections and one's wider conception of
duty and work comes in.
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