"My dear Dick, I am afraid I read Schopenhauer because I thought what
he writes long before I ever heard of him. I read him because did I
not find a clear logical mind going the same way my mind will go, I
might be troubled with doubts, and afraid that I was going quite
wrong."

"Well, the deuce and all with a woman when she begins to read stuff
like that is her inability to generalize. You women take everything
home to yourselves. You try to deduct conclusions from your own lives
which men like Schopenhauer have scanned the centuries for. The
natural course of your life could hardly have provided you with the
pessimism with which--I hope you will pardon my remark, my dear--you
have treated me several times in the past few months. Chamfort and
Schopenhauer did that. But these are not subjects a man discusses
easily with his wife."

"Indeed? Then that is surely an error of civilization. If a man can
discuss such matters more easily with a woman who is not his wife, it
is because there is no frankness in marriage. Dick, did it ever occur
to you that a man and woman, strongly attracted toward one another,
might live together many years without understanding each other?"

"God forbid!"

"How easily you say that!"

"I have heard that most women think they are not understood, but I
never reflected on the matter."