And now—­make her happy—­Robert—­my Mary.

[About to go.]

ROBERT.

But what has all this to do with Mary?

FORESTER.

Why, you have not yet understood me?  Look here!  The stag must not have an inkling that you are very anxious about him; and much less a woman.  You make too much fuss about the women.  Children must not know how dearly one loves them; anything but that!  But women even less so.  In reality, they are nothing but grown-up children, only more shrewd.  And the children are already shrewd enough.—­Sit down, Robert, I must tell you something.

[They sit at the edge of the table, facing the audience.]

When that Mary of mine was four years old—­no taller than this—­I once came home later than usual.  “Where is Mary?” I ask.  One child says:  “In her room;” the other:  “In front of the house.  She’ll be here pretty soon.”  But one guess was as far from the truth as the other.  Evening comes, night comes—­Mary does not appear.  I go outside.  In the garden, in the adjoining shrubbery, on the rocks of the dell, in the whole forest—­not a trace of Mary.  In the meantime my wife is looking for her at your house, then at every house in the village, but nowhere can she find a trace of Mary.  Can it be possible that some one should have kidnapped her?  Why, she was as beautiful as a wax-doll, my Mary.  The whole night I never touched my bed.  Even at that time Mary was everything to me.  The next morning I alarm the entire village.  Not a person fails to respond.  All were passionately fond of Mary.  At least I wished to bury the corpse.  In the dell, you know, the thicket of firs—­under the cliffs where on the other side of the brook the old footpath runs high along the rocks-next to it the willows.  This time I crawl through the whole thicket.  In the midst of it is the small open meadows; there at last I see something red and white.  Praised be heaven!  It is she—­and neither dead nor ill, no, safe and sound in the green grass; and after her sleep her little cheeks were as red as peonies, Robert.  But—­

[He looks about him and lowers his voice.]

I hope she is not listening.

[Draws closer to ROBERT; whenever he forgets himself, he immediately lowers his voice.]

I say:  “Is it you, really?” “Of course,” she says, and rubs her eyes so that they sparkle.  “And you are alive,” I say; “and did not die,” I say, “of hunger and fear?” I say.  “Half a day and a whole, night alone in the forest, in the very thickest of the forest!  Come,” I say, “that in the meantime mother may not die of anxiety,” I say.  Says she:  “Wait a while, father.”  “But, why and for what?” “Till the child comes again,” says she.  “And let us take it with us, please, father.  It is a dear child.”  “But who, in all the world, is this child?” I ask.  “The one that came to me,” says she, “when I ran away from you a little while ago after the yellow