ADOLPH. Yes, isn't it queer? What I really feared was that her friends would get such an influence over her that they would begin to exercise some kind of indirect power over me—and that is something I couldn't bear.
GUSTAV. So your ideas don't agree—yours and your wife's?
ADOLPH. Seeing that you have heard so much already, I may as well tell you everything. My wife has an independent nature—what are you smiling at?
GUSTAV. Go on! She has an independent nature—
ADOLPH. Which cannot accept anything from me—
GUSTAV. But from everybody else.
ADOLPH. [After a pause] Yes.—And it looked as if she especially hated my ideas because they were mine, and not because there was anything wrong about them. For it used to happen quite often that she advanced ideas that had once been mine, and that she stood up for them as her own. Yes, it even happened that friends of mine gave her ideas which they had taken directly from me, and then they seemed all right. Everything was all right except what came from me.
GUSTAV. Which means that you are not entirely happy?
ADOLPH. Oh yes, I am happy. I have the one I wanted, and I have never wanted anybody else.
GUSTAV. And you have never wanted to be free?