ADOLPH.  Oh, it’s just a joke, of course!

GUSTAV.  Of course!  But this is clear cannibalism, I think.  Do you know what’s behind that sort of practice?  The savages eat their enemies in order to acquire their useful qualities.  And this woman has been eating your soul, your courage, your knowledge—­

ADOLPH.  And my faith!  It was I who urged her to write her first book—­

GUSTAV. [Making a face] Oh-h-h!

ADOLPH.  It was I who praised her, even when I found her stuff rather poor.  It was I who brought her into literary circles where she could gather honey from our most ornamental literary flowers.  It was I who used my personal influence to keep the critics from her throat.  It was I who blew her faith in herself into flame; blew on it until I lost my own breath.  I gave, gave, gave—­until I had nothing left for myself.  Do you know—­I’ll tell you everything now—­do you know I really believe—­and the human soul is so peculiarly constituted—­I believe that when my artistic successes seemed about to put her in the shadow—­as well as her reputation—­ then I tried to put courage into her by belittling myself, and by making my own art seem inferior to hers.  I talked so long about the insignificant part played by painting on the whole—­talked so long about it, and invented so many reasons to prove what I said, that one fine day I found myself convinced of its futility.  So all you had to do was to breathe on a house of cards.

GUSTAV.  Pardon me for recalling what you said at the beginning of our talk—­that she had never taken anything from you.

ADOLPH.  She doesn’t nowadays.  Because there is nothing more to take.

GUSTAV.  The snake being full, it vomits now.

ADOLPH.  Perhaps she has been taking a good deal more from me than
I have been aware of?

GUSTAV.  You can be sure of that.  She took when you were not looking, and that is called theft.

ADOLPH.  Perhaps she never did educate me?

GUSTAV.  But you her?  In all likelihood!  But it was her trick to make it appear the other way to you.  May I ask how she set about educating you?

ADOLPH.  Oh, first of all—­hm!

GUSTAV.  Well?

ADOLPH.  Well, I—­

GUSTAV.  No, we were speaking of her.

ADOLPH.  Really, I cannot tell now.

GUSTAV.  Do you see!

ADOLPH.  However—­she devoured my faith also, and so I sank further and further down, until you came along and gave me a new faith.

GUSTAV. [Smiling] In sculpture?

ADOLPH. [Doubtfully] Yes.

GUSTAV.  And have you really faith in it?  In this abstract, antiquated art that dates back to the childhood of civilisation?  Do you believe that you can obtain your effect by pure form—­by the three dimensions—­tell me?  That you can reach the practical mind of our own day, and convey an illusion to it, without the use of colour—­without colour, mind you—­do you really believe that?