MR. Y. Well, how are you going to prevent it?  You don’t dare to have me arrested.  So you’ll have to let me go.  And when I am gone, I can do what I please.

MR. X. You devil!  So you have found my vulnerable spot!  Do you want to make a real murderer out of me?

MR. Y. That’s more than you’ll ever become—­coward!

MR. X. There you see how different people are.  You have a feeling that I cannot become guilty of the same kind of acts as you.  And that gives you the upper hand.  But suppose you forced me to treat you as I treated that coachman?

[He lifts his hand as if ready to hit MR. Y.]

MR. Y. [Staring MR. X. straight in the face] You can’t!  It’s too much for one who couldn’t save himself by means of the box over there.

ME.  X. So you don’t think I have taken anything out of the box?

MR. Y. You were too cowardly—­just as you were too cowardly to tell your wife that she had married a murderer.

MR. X. You are a different man from what I took you to be—­if stronger or weaker, I cannot tell—­if more criminal or less, that’s none of my concern—­but decidedly more stupid; that much is quite plain.  For stupid you were when you wrote another person’s name instead of begging—­as I have had to do.  Stupid you were when you stole things out of my book—­could you not guess that I might have read my own books?  Stupid you were when you thought yourself cleverer than me, and when you thought that I could be lured into becoming a thief.  Stupid you were when you thought balance could be restored by giving the world two thieves instead of one.  But most stupid of all you were when you thought I had failed to provide a safe corner-stone for my happiness.  Go ahead and write my wife as many anonymous letters as you please about her husband having killed a man—­she knew that long before we were married!—­ Have you had enough now?

MR. Y. May I go?

MR. X. Now you have to go!  And at once!  I’ll send your things after you!—­Get out of here!

(Curtain.)