“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.

“It’s a sex attraction—­not quite the oldest and most primitive thing in the world, but nearly.  Only, Darby and Joan aren’t primitive people.  If they were, the attraction would satisfy itself in a direct primitive way.  But each of them is carrying a perfectly enormous superstructure of ideas and inhibitions, emotional refinements and capacities, and the sex attraction is so disguised that they don’t recognize it.  Do you know what a short circuit is in electricity?”

“I think so,” said Rose, “but you’d better not take a chance.  Tell me that, too.”

“Why,” he said, “the juice that comes into your house to light it and heat the flat-irons and the toaster, and so on, comes in by one wire and goes out by another.  Before it can get out, it’s got to do all the work you want it to do—­push its way through the resistance of fine tungsten filaments in your lamps and the iron wires in your heaters that get white hot resisting it.  When it’s pushed its way through all of them and done the work you want it to do, it’s tired out and goes away by the other wire.  But if you cut off the insulation down in the basement, where those two wires are close together, and make it possible for the current to jump straight across without doing any work, it will take the short circuit instead of the long one and you won’t have any lights in your house.  Now do you see what I mean?

“Darby and Joan are civilized.  That is to say, they’re insulated.  The current’s there, but it’s long-circuited.  The only expression it’s got is through the intelligence,—­so it lights the house.  Absence of common knowledge and common interests only adds to the resistance and makes it burn all the brighter.  Naturally Darby and Joan fall victims to the very dangerous illusion that they’re intellectual companions.  They think they’re having wonderful talks.  All they are doing, is long-circuiting their sex attraction.  Well, marriage gives it a short circuit.  Why should the current light the lamps when it can strike straight across?  There you are!”