"I don't understand her--and I doubt if she understands herself." And that last was very near to the truth.

Everyone has a reason for everything he does; but it by no means follows that he always knows that reason, or even could extricate it from the tangle of motives, real and reputed, behind any given act.

This self-ignorance is less common among men than among women, with their deliberate training to self-consciousness and to duplicity; it is most common among those--men as well as women--who think about themselves chiefly.

And Adelaide, having little to think about when all her thinking was hired out, had of necessity thought chiefly about herself.
"You guessed that Janet has thrown me over ?" Arthur said, to open the way for relieving his mind.
Adelaide made a gallant effort, and her desire to console him conquered her vanity.

"Just as Ross threw me over," she replied, with a successful imitation of indifference.
Instead of being astonished at the news, Arthur was astonished at his not having guessed it.