We've grown up under the terror of
Grundy and that innocent but docile and--yes--formidable lady, his
wife. I don't know how far the complications aren't a disease, a sort of
bleaching under the Grundy shadow.... It is possible there are things
I have still to learn about women.... Man has eaten of the Tree of
Knowledge. His innocence is gone. You can't have your cake and eat
it. We're in for knowledge; let's have it plain and straight. I should
begin, I think, by abolishing the ideas of decency and indecency...."
"Grundy would have fits!" I injected.
"Grundy, Ponderevo, would have cold douches--publicly--if the sight was
not too painful--three times a day.... But I don't think, mind you,
that I should let the sexes run about together. No. The fact behind the
sexes--is sex. It's no good humbugging. It trails about--even in the
best mixed company. Tugs at your ankle. The men get showing off and
quarrelling--and the women. Or they're bored. I suppose the ancestral
males have competed for the ancestral females ever since they were both
some sort of grubby little reptile.
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