Page:HG Wells--secret places of the heart.djvu/121

Rh the fundamental incompatibility between one’s affections and one’s wider conception of duty and work comes in. We cannot change social institutions in a year or a lifetime. We can never change them to suit an individual case. That would be like suspending the laws of gravitation in order to move a piano. As things are, Martin is no good to me, no help to me. She is a rival to my duty. She feels that. She is hostile to my duty. A definite antagonism has developed. She feels and treats fuel—and everything to do with fuel as a bore. It is an attack. We quarrel on that. It isn’t as though I found it so easy to stick to my work that I could disregard her hostility. And I can’t bear to part from her. I threaten it, distress her excessively and then I am overcome by sympathy for her and I go back to her.... In the ordinary course of things I should be with her now.”

“If it were not for the carbuncle?”

“If it were not for the carbuncle. She does not care for me to see her disfigured. She does not understand——” Sir Richmond was at a loss for a phrase——“that it is not her good looks.”

“She won’t let you go to her?”

“It amounts to that.... And soon there will be all the trouble about educating the girl. Whatever happens, she must have as good a chance as—anyone....”

“Ah! That is worrying you too!”