"I want a book from the library."
"Hildreth and Penton are there. Hildreth is having a soul-state."
"A what?" I laughed.
"Oh, she thinks something is the matter with her soul, and, for the three hundredth time since I've known them, Penton and she are discussing their lives together."
"I don't see anything to jest about in that."
"I'm tiring of it ... if Hildreth has a tooth-ache, or anything that the rest of us women accept as a matter of course, she runs to Mubby, as she calls him ... and, as if it were some abstruse, philosophical problem, they talk on, hour after hour ... like German metaphysics, there's no end to it. They've been at it since ten and they'll go on till four, if they follow precedents ... Penton takes Hildreth too seriously."
"You talk as if you, you were jealous of Hildreth and in love with Penton."
"It's neither the one nor the other. I love them both, and I want to see them happy together."
"You see, Darrie, neither you nor I are married, and neither of us knows anything about sex, except in the theory of the books we've read—how can we judge the troubles of a man and woman who are married?"
"There's a lot in what you say."