Gustav. So you and your wife didn't have quite identical views?
Adolf. I've told you so much, you may as well know everything—-my wife is an independent character. [Gustav laughs.] What are you laughing at, old man?
Gustav. Go on, go on. She's an independent character, is she?
Adolf. She won't take anything from me.
Gustav. But she does from everybody else?
Adolf [after a pause]. Yes. And I've felt about all this, that the only reason why my views were so awfully repugnant to her, was because they were mine, not because they appeared absurd on their intrinsic merits. For it often happened that she'd trot out my old ideas, and champion them with gusto as her own. Why, it even came about that one of my friends gave her ideas which he had borrowed direct from me. She found them delightful; she found everything delightful that didn't come from me.
Gustav. In other words, you're not truly happy.
Adolf. Oh yes, I am. The woman whom I desired is mine, and I never wished for any other.
Gustav. Do you never wish to be free either?
Adolf. I wouldn't like to go quite so far as that. Of course the thought crops up now and again, how calmly I should be able to live if I were free—but she scarcely leaves me before I immediately long for her again, as though she were my arm, my leg. Strange. When I'm alone I sometimes feel as though she didn't have any real self of her own, as though she were a part of my ego, a piece out of my inside, that stole away all my will, all my joie de vivre. Why, my very marrow itself, to use an anatomical expression, is situated in her; that's what it seems like.