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Page 91
LADY. What's that?
STRANGER. My companion, who's waiting for me.
LADY (continuing the conversation). I never thought life would give
me anything so sweet as a child.
STRANGER. And at the same time anything so bitter.
LADY. Why bitter?
STRANGER. You've been a child yourself, and you must remember how
we, when we'd just married, came to your mother in rags, dirty and
without money. I seem to remember she didn't find us very sweet.
LADY. That's true.
STRANGER. And I ... well, just now I met Sylvia. And I expected
that all that was beautiful and good in the child would have
blossomed in the girl. ...
LADY. Well?
STRANGER. I found a faded rose, that seemed to have blown too soon.
Her breasts were sunken, her hair untidy like that of a neglected
child, and her teeth decayed.
LADY. Oh!
STRANGER. You mustn't grieve. Not for the child! You might perhaps
have had to grieve for her later, as I did.
LADY. So that's what life is?
STRANGER. Yes. That's what life is. And that's why I'm going to
bury myself alive.
LADY. Where?
STRANGER (pointing to the monastery). Up there!
LADY. In the monastery? No, don't leave me. Bear me company. I'm so
alone in the world and so poor, so poor! When the child died, my
mother turned me out, and ever since I've been living in an attic
with a dressmaker. At first she was kind and pleasant, but then the
lonely evenings got too long for her, and she went out in search of
company--so we parted. Now I'm on the road, and I've nothing but
the clothes I'm wearing; nothing but my grief. I eat it and drink
it; it nourishes me and sends me to sleep. I'd rather lose anything
in the world than that! (The STRANGER weeps.) You're weeping. You!
Let me kiss your eyelids.
STRANGER. You've suffered all that for my sake!
LADY. Not for your sake! You never did me an ill turn; but I
plagued you till you left your fireside and your child!
STRANGER. I'd forgotten that; but if you say so. ... So you still
love me?
LADY. Probably. I don't know.
STRANGER. And you'd like to begin all over again?
LADY. All over again? The quarrels? No, we won't do that.
STRANGER. You're right. The quarrels would only begin all over
again. And yet it's difficult to part.
LADY. To part. The word alone's terrible enough.
STRANGER. Then what are we to do?
LADY. I don't know.
STRANGER. No, one knows nothing, hardly even that one knows
nothing; and that's why, you see, I've got as far as to _believe_.
LADY. How do you know you can believe, if belief's a gift?
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