JEAN.  I swear!

[MISS JULIA goes quickly out to the right.  JEAN follows her eagerly.]

***

BALLET

The peasants enter.  They are decked out in their best and carry flowers in their hats.  A fiddler leads them.  On the table they place a barrel of small-beer and a keg of “braennvin,” or white Swedish whiskey, both of them decorated with wreathes woven out of leaves.  First they drink.  Then they form in ring and sing and dance to the melody heard before: 

      “Through the fields come two ladies a-walking.”

The dance finished, they leave singing.

***

JULIA. [Enters alone.  On seeing the disorder in the kitchen, she claps her hands together.  Then she takes out a powder-puff and begins to powder her face.]

JEAN. [Enters in a state of exaltation] There you see!  And you heard, didn’t you?  Do you think it possible to stay here?

JULIA.  No, I don’t think so.  But what are we to do?

JEAN.  Run away, travel, far away from here.

JULIA.  Travel?  Yes-but where?

JEAN.  To Switzerland, the Italian lakes—­you have never been there?

JULIA.  No.  Is the country beautiful?

JEAN.  Oh!  Eternal summer!  Orange trees!  Laurels!  Oh!

JULIA.  But then-what are we to do down there?

JEAN.  I’ll start a hotel, everything first class, including the customers?

JULIA.  Hotel?

JEAN.  That’s the life, I tell you!  Constantly new faces and new languages.  Never a minute free for nerves or brooding.  No trouble about what to do—­for the work is calling to be done:  night and day, bells that ring, trains that whistle, ’busses that come and go; and gold pieces raining on the counter all the time.  That’s the life for you!

JULIA.  Yes, that is life.  And I?

JEAN.  The mistress of everything, the chief ornament of the house.  With your looks—­and your manners—­oh, success will be assured!  Enormous!  You’ll sit like a queen in the office and keep the slaves going by the touch of an electric button.  The guests will pass in review before your throne and timidly deposit their treasures on your table.  You cannot imagine how people tremble when a bill is presented to them—­I’ll salt the items, and you’ll sugar them with your sweetest smiles.  Oh, let us get away from here—­[pulling a time-table from his pocket]—­at once, with the next train!  We’ll be in Malmoe at 6.30; in Hamburg at 8.40 to-morrow morning; in Frankfort and Basel a day later.  And to reach Como by way of the St. Gotthard it will take us—­let me see—­three days.  Three days!

JULIA.  All that is all right.  But you must give me some courage—­
Jean.  Tell me that you love me.  Come and take me in your arms.

JEAN. [Reluctantly] I should like to—­but I don’t dare.  Not in this house again.  I love you—­beyond doubt—­or, can you doubt it, Miss Julia?