"That's a fascinating speculation," he said. "I wish I could persuade her some time to indulge the wild eccentricity of trying it out."
"Well, why?" she demanded.
"Shall I try to say something witty," he asked, "or do you want it, as near as may be, absolutely straight?"
"Let's indulge," she said, "in the wild, eccentricity of talking straight."
The cigarettes came around just then, and he lighted one rather deliberately, at one of the candles, before he answered.
"I am under the impression," he said, "that husbands and wives can talk exactly as well as any other two people. Exactly as well, and no better. The necessary conditions for real conversation are a real interest in and knowledge of a common subject; ability on the part of both to contribute something to that subject. Well, if a husband and wife can meet those terms, they can talk. But the joker is, as our legislative friend over there would say," (he nodded down the table toward a young millionaire of altruistic principles, who had got elected to the state assembly) "the joker is that a man and a woman who aren't married, and who are moderately attracted to each other, can talk, or seem to talk, without meeting those conditions."
"Seem to talk?" she questioned.
"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.