TEKLA.  Is she good looking?

GUSTAV.  Yes, to me.  But perhaps I am too old.  It’s queer—­now when chance has brought me together with you again—­I am beginning to doubt whether it will be possible to play the game over again.

TEKLA.  How do you mean?

GUSTAV.  I can feel that my roots stick in your soil, and the old wounds are beginning to break open.  You are a dangerous woman, Tekla!

TEKLA.  Am I?  And my young husband says that I can make no more conquests.

GUSTAV.  That means he has ceased to love you.

TEKLA.  Well, I can’t quite make out what love means to him.

GUSTAV.  You have been playing hide and seek so long that at last you cannot find each other at all.  Such things do happen.  You have had to play the innocent to yourself, until he has lost his courage.  There are some drawbacks to a change, I tell you—­there are drawbacks to it, indeed.

TEKLA.  Do you mean to reproach—­

GUSTAV.  Not at all!  Whatever happens is to a certain extent necessary, for if it didn’t happen, something else would—­but now it did happen, and so it had to happen.

TEKLA. You are a man of discernment.  And I have never met anybody with whom I liked so much to exchange ideas.  You are so utterly free from all morality and preaching, and you ask so little of people, that it is possible to be oneself in your presence.  Do you know, I am jealous of your intended wife!

GUSTAV.  And do you realise that I am jealous of your husband?

TEKLA. [Rising] And now we must part!  Forever!

GUSTAV.  Yes, we must part!  But not without a farewell—­or what do you say?

TEKLA. [Agitated] No!

GUSTAV. [Following after her] Yes!—­Let us have a farewell!  Let us drown our memories—­you know, there are intoxications so deep that when you wake up all memories are gone. [Putting his arm around her waist] You have been dragged down by a diseased spirit, who is infecting you with his own anaemia.  I’ll breathe new life into you.  I’ll make your talent blossom again in your autumn days, like a remontant rose.  I’ll—–­

(Two LADIES in travelling dress are seen in the doorway leading to the veranda.  They look surprised.  Then they point at those within, laugh, and disappear.)

TEKLA. [Freeing herself] Who was that?

GUSTAV. [Indifferently] Some tourists.

TEKLA.  Leave me alone!  I am afraid of you!

GUSTAV.  Why?

TEKLA.  You take my soul away from me!

GUSTAV.  And give you my own in its place!  And you have no soul for that matter—­it’s nothing but a delusion.

TEKLA.  You have a way of saying impolite things so that nobody can be angry with you.

GUSTAV.  It’s because you feel that I hold the first mortgage on you—­Tell me now, when—­and—­where?

TEKLA.  No, it wouldn’t be right to him.  I think he is still in love with me, and I don’t want to do any more harm.