They brought in a new baby today. The girls named her Zan Xien.It means "brand-new." The nuns are going to call it Katherine, which, of course... none of the girls will be able to say. Thank goodness for those nuns. They do so much for so little in return.
I suppose you could look at it that way.
You suppose?
I think it might be a bit more complicated than that.
They take in desperate children and give them a chance at life. What could be so complicated about that?
They also go to young mothers in their homes. They ask them to give their babies to the convent. They offer them money to support their families to persuade them to do it. They're not just here to run an orphanage, your nuns. They're turning those children into little Catholics. None of us are in China without a reason.
Still, on the whole... I think that what they're doing is a pretty good deed, don't you?
I'm here to study bacteria. I don't feel a need to have an opinion about the rest.
Well, I do, and I admire them. I don't think it has to be so complicated and gloomy. And I think what you're doing, for instance, is incredibly noble.
You used to feel contempt for me. Don't you still?
Walter. I can't believe that you, with all your cleverness... should have such little sense of proportion. We humans are more complex than your silly little microbes. We're unpredictable. We make mistakes and we disappoint.
Yes, we certainly do.
I'm sorry. I'm sorry I'm not the perfect young woman that you want me to be. I'm just ordinary. I never tried to pretend that I was anything else.
No, you certainly didn't.
I like the theater, and dancing... and playing tennis. I like games. I like men who play games. God forgive me, that's the way I was brought up.
I play a pretty fierce hand of bridge.
Oh, well, that's bloody exciting. And you, you dragged me around all those interminable galleries in Venice... blathering on about the miracle of the canals... and the flushing of the lagoon system, or some such nonsense. Honestly, I'd have been much happier playing golf at Sandwich.
I suppose you're right.
It was silly of us to look for qualities in each other that we never had.
Yes. Yes, it was.
