ADOLPH. [Gets up] Will you sit for me a moment, Tekla?  With the side of your face this way, so that I can put a face on my figure.

TEKLA.  Of course, I will.

[Turns her head so he can see her in profile.]

ADOLPH. [Gazes hard at her while pretending to work at the figure]
Don’t think of me now—­but of somebody else.

TEKLA.  I’ll think of my latest conquest.

ADOLPH.  That chaste young man?

TEKLA.  Exactly!  He had a pair of the prettiest, sweetest moustaches, and his cheek looked like a peach—­it was so soft and rosy that you just wanted to bite it.

ADOLPH. [Darkening] Please keep that expression about the mouth.

TEKLA.  What expression?

ADOLPH.  A cynical, brazen one that I have never seen before.

TEKLA. [Making a face] This one?

ADOLPH.  Just that one! [Getting up] Do you know how Bret Harte pictures an adulteress?

TEKLA. [Smiling] No, I have never read Bret Something.

ADOLPH.  As a pale creature that cannot blush.

TEKLA.  Not at all?  But when she meets her lover, then she must blush, I am sure, although her husband or Mr. Bret may not be allowed to see it.

ADOLPH.  Are you so sure of that?

TEKLA. [As before] Of course, as the husband is not capable of bringing the blood up to her head, he cannot hope to behold the charming spectacle.

ADOLPH. [Enraged] Tekla!

TEKLA.  Oh, you little ninny!

ADOLPH.  Tekla!

TEKLA.  He should call her Pussy—­then I might get up a pretty little blush for his sake.  Does he want me to?

ADOLPH. [Disarmed] You minx, I’m so angry with you, that I could bite you!

TEKLA. [Playfully] Come and bite me then!—­Come!

[Opens her arms to him.]

ADOLPH. [Puts his hands around her neck and kisses her] Yes, I’ll bite you to death!

TEKLA. [Teasingly] Look out—­somebody might come!

ADOLPH.  Well, what do I care!  I care for nothing else in the world if I can only have you!

TEKLA.  And when, you don’t have me any longer?

ADOLPH.  Then I shall die!

TEKLA.  But you are not afraid of losing me, are you—­as I am too old to be wanted by anybody else?

ADOLPH.  You have not forgotten my words yet, Tekla!  I take it all back now!

TEKLA.  Can you explain to me why you are at once so jealous and so cock-sure?

ADOLPH.  No, I cannot explain anything at all.  But it’s possible that the thought of somebody else having possessed you may still be gnawing within me.  At times it appears to me as if our love were nothing but a fiction, an attempt at self-defence, a passion kept up as a matter of honor—­and I can’t think of anything that would give me more pain than to have him know that I am unhappy.  Oh, I have never seen him—­but the mere thought that a person exists who is waiting for my misfortune to arrive, who is daily calling down curses on my head, who will roar with laughter when I perish—­the mere idea of it obsesses me, drives me nearer to you, fascinates me, paralyses me!