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108 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,