seems to me to have done the best it could with a very
difficult problem. It has not actually allowed different codes of
morals to men and women, and it may have had to wink on that account.
Right there, in your Schopenhauer, you have a primal reason, that is,
if you chose to follow your philosopher to the extent of actually
believing that Nature has deliberately, from the beginning, protected
women against that sin of which so much is made, and to which she has,
as deliberately, for economic reasons of her own, tempted men."

"I do believe it, truly."

"You are no more charitable toward my sex than most women are. Yet
neither your teacher nor you may be right. A theoretic arguer like
Schopenhauer makes good enough reading for calm minds, but he is bad
for an emotional temperament, and, by Jove, Naomi, he was a bad
example of his own philosophy."

"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."

"You and I have not troubled one another much with our doubts and
perplexities."

"You and I have been very happy together--I hope." There was a little
pause before the last two words, as if he had expected her to
anticipate them with something, and there was