“I want to part.  I believe I ought to part.”

“Well?”

“But then my affection comes in.”

“That extraordinary—­tenderness of yours?”

“I’m afraid.”

“Of what?”

“Anyone might get hold of her—­if I let her down.  She hasn’t a tithe of the ordinary coolheaded calculation of an average woman....  I’ve a duty to her genius.  I’ve got to take care of her.”

To which the doctor made no reply.

“Nevertheless the idea of parting has been very much in my mind lately.”

“Letting her go free?”

“You can put it in that way if you like.”

“It might not be a fatal operation for either of you.”

“And yet there are moods when parting is an intolerable idea.  When one
is invaded by a flood of affection.....  And old habits of association.”

Dr. Martineau thought.  Was that the right word,—­affection?  Perhaps it was.

They had come out on the towing path close by the lock and they found themselves threading their way through a little crowd of boating people and lookers-on.  For a time their conversation was broken.  Sir Richmond resumed it.

“But this is where we cease to be Man on his Planet and all the rest of it.  This is where the idea of a definite task, fanatically followed to the exclusion of all minor considerations, breaks down.  When the work is good, when we are sure we are all right, then we may carry off things with a high hand.  But the work isn’t always good, we aren’t always sure.  We blunder, we make a muddle, we are fatigued.  Then the sacrificed affections come in as accusers.  Then it is that we want to be reassured.”

“And then it is that Miss Martin Leeds—?”

“Doesn’t,” Sir Richmond snapped.

Came a long pause.

“And yet—­It is extraordinarily difficult to think of parting from Martin.”

Section 3

In the evening after dinner Dr. Martineau sought, rather unsuccessfully, to go on with the analysis of Sir Richmond.

But Sir Richmond was evidently a creature of moods.  Either he regretted the extent of his confidences or the slight irrational irritation that he felt at waiting for his car affected his attitude towards his companion, or Dr. Martineau’s tentatives were ill-chosen.  At any rate he would not rise to any conversational bait that the doctor could devise.  The doctor found this the more regrettable because it seemed to him that there was much to be worked upon in this Martin Leeds affair.  He was inclined to think that she and Sir Richmond were unduly obsessed by the idea that they had to stick together because of the child, because of the look of the thing and so forth, and that really each might be struggling against a very strong impulse indeed to break off the affair.  It seemed evident to the doctor that they jarred upon and annoyed each other extremely.  On the whole separating people appealed to a doctor’s mind more strongly than bringing them together.  Accordingly he framed his enquiries so as to make the revelation of a latent antipathy as easy as possible.