"Seem to exchange ideas mutually. They think they do, but they don't.
It's pure illusion, that's the answer."

"I'm not clever, really," said Rose, "and I don't know much, and I
simply don't understand. Will you explain it, in short words,"--she
smiled--"since we're not married, you know?"

He grinned back at her. "All right," he said, "since we're not married,
I will. We'll take a case ..." He looked around the table. "We'll be
discreet," he amended, "and take a hypothetical case. We'll take Darby
and Joan. They encounter each other somewhere, and something about them
that men have written volumes about and never explained yet, sets
up--you might almost call it a chemical reaction between them--a
physical reaction, certainly. They arrest each other's attention--get to
thinking about each other, are strongly drawn together.

"It's a sex attraction--not quite the oldest and most primitive thing in
the world, but nearly. Only, Darby and Joan aren't primitive people. If
they were, the attraction would satisfy itself in a direct primitive
way. But each of them is carrying a perfectly enormous superstructure of
ideas and inhibitions, emotional refinements and capacities, and the sex
attraction is so disguised that they don't recognize it. Do you know
what a short circuit is in electricity?"

"I think so," said Rose, "but you'd better not take a chance. Tell me
that, too."

"Why," he said, "the juice that comes into your house to light it and
heat the flat-irons and the toaster, and so on, comes in by one wire and
goes out by another. Before it can get out, it's got to do all the work