"Well, I'm not what you might call smitten by her, but that's because she seems to think I'm wasting time in writing novels. She's too strenuous for me. I like women who relax sometimes. She'll orate to him every night, just as she orated to us, about people's wrongs...."
"Mind, she's clever!" said Gilbert.
"Oh, I don't deny that. That's part of my case against her. Really and truly, Gilbert, do you like clever women?"
"Really and truly, Quinny, I don't. Perhaps that's not the way to put it. I like talking to clever women, but I shouldn't like to marry one of them. I'm clever myself, and perhaps that's why. There isn't room for more than one clever person in a family, and I think a clever man should marry an intelligently stupid woman, and vice versa. You can argue with clever women, but you can't kiss them or flirt with them. All the clever ones I've ever known have had something hard in them ... like a lump of steel. Men aren't like that! They can be hard, of course, but they aren't always exhibiting their hardness. Clever women are."
Henry tossed Marsh's letter across the table to Gilbert.
"Read that," he said, "while I look through the Times!"
They both rose from the table, and sat for a while in the armchairs on either side of the fireplace.
"You know, Quinny," said Gilbert, as he took Marsh's letter out of its envelope, "I often think we're awfully young, all of us!"
"Young?"
"Yes. Immature ... and all that. We're frightfully clever, of course, but really we don't know much, and yet you're writing books and I'm writing plays and Ninian's building Tunnels and Roger's playing ducks and drakes with the law ... and not one of us is thirty yet. Lord, I wish Roger hadn't got engaged. That sort of thing makes a man think!"