GUSTAV.  Well?  Have you seen her former husband?

ADOLPH.  No, never.  I have only had a casual glance at a very poor portrait of him, and then I couldn’t detect the slightest resemblance.

GUSTAV.  Oh, portraits are never like the original, and, besides, he might have changed considerably since it was made.  However, I hope it hasn’t aroused any suspicions in you?

ADOLPH.  Not at all.  The child was born a year after our marriage, and the husband was abroad when I first met Tekla—­it happened right here, in this very house even, and that’s why we come here every summer.

GUSTAV.  No, then there can be no cause for suspicion.  And you wouldn’t have had any reason to trouble yourself anyhow, for the children of a widow who marries again often show a likeness to her dead husband.  It is annoying, of course, and that’s why they used to burn all widows in India, as you know.—­But tell me:  have you ever felt jealous of him—­of his memory?  Would it not sicken you to meet him on a walk and hear him, with his eyes on your Tekla, use the word “we” instead of “I"?—­We!

ADOLPH.  I cannot deny that I have been pursued by that very thought.

GUSTAV.  There now!—­And you’ll never get rid of it.  There are discords in this life which can never be reduced to harmony.  For this reason you had better put wax in your ears and go to work.  If you work, and grow old, and pile masses of new impressions on the hatches, then the corpse will stay quiet in the hold.

ADOLPH.  Pardon me for interrupting you, but—­it is wonderful how you resemble Tekla now and then while you are talking.  You have a way of blinking one eye as if you were taking aim with a gun, and your eyes have the same influence on me as hers have at times.

GUSTAV.  No, really?

ADOLPH.  And now you said that “no, really” in the same indifferent way that she does.  She also has the habit of saying “no, really” quite often.

GUSTAV.  Perhaps we are distantly related, seeing that all human beings are said to be of one family.  At any rate, it will be interesting to make your wife’s acquaintance to see if what you say is true.

ADOLPH.  And do you know, she never takes an expression from me.  She seems rather to avoid my vocabulary, and I have never caught her using any of my gestures.  And yet people as a rule develop what is called “marital resemblance.”

GUSTAV.  And do you know why this has not happened in your case?—­ That woman has never loved you.

ADOLPH.  What do you mean?

GUSTAV.  I hope you will excuse what I am saying—­but woman’s love consists in taking, in receiving, and one from whom she takes nothing does not have her love.  She has never loved you!

ADOLPH.  Don’t you think her capable of loving more than once?

GUSTAV.  No, for we cannot be deceived more than once.  Then our eyes are opened once for all.  You have never been deceived, and so you had better beware of those that have.  They are dangerous, I tell you.