GUSTAV. Yes, you have a strong tendency toward that kind of
disease.
ADOLPH. I was afraid of losing her--and I tried to prevent it.
There is nothing strange in that. But I was never afraid that she
might be deceiving me--
GUSTAV. No, that's what married men are never afraid of.
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.
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