GUSTAV.  There, you see! [With a change of tactics] And to tell the truth, it would only make you ridiculous to like it.

ADOLPH.  Ridiculous?  Can a man be ridiculous because he trusts his wife?

GUSTAV.  Of course he can.  And it’s just what you are already—­and thoroughly at that!

ADOLPH. [Convulsively] I!  It’s what I dread most of all—­and there’s going to be a change.

GUSTAV.  Don’t get excited now—­or you’ll have another attack.

ADOLPH.  But why isn’t she ridiculous when I stay out all night?

GUSTAV.  Yes, why?  Well, it’s nothing that concerns you, but that’s the way it is.  And while you are trying to figure out why, the mishap has already occurred.

ADOLPH.  What mishap?

GUSTAV.  However, the first husband was a tyrant, and she took him only to get her freedom.  You see, a girl cannot have freedom except by providing herself with a chaperon—­or what we call a husband.

ADOLPH.  Of course not.

GUSTAV.  And now you are the chaperon.

ADOLPH.  I?

GUSTAV.  Since you are her husband.

(ADOLPH keeps a preoccupied silence.)

GUSTAV.  Am I not right?

ADOLPH. [Uneasily] I don’t know.  You live with a woman for years, and you never stop to analyse her, or your relationship with her, and then—­then you begin to think—­and there you are!—­Gustav, you are my friend.  The only male friend I have.  During this last week you have given me courage to live again.  It is as if your own magnetism had been poured into me.  Like a watchmaker, you have fixed the works in my head and wound up the spring again.  Can’t you hear, yourself, how I think more clearly and speak more to the point?  And to myself at least it seems as if my voice had recovered its ring.

GUSTAV.  So it seems to me also.  And why is that?

ADOLPH.  I shouldn’t wonder if you grew accustomed to lower your voice in talking to women.  I know at least that Tekla always used to accuse me of shouting.

GUSTAV.  And so you toned down your voice and accepted the rule of the slipper?

ADOLPH.  That isn’t quite the way to put it. [After some reflection] I think it is even worse than that.  But let us talk of something else!—­What was I saying?—­Yes, you came here, and you enabled me to see my art in its true light.  Of course, for some time I had noticed my growing lack of interest in painting, as it didn’t seem to offer me the proper medium for the expression of what I wanted to bring out.  But when you explained all this to me, and made it clear why painting must fail as a timely outlet for the creative instinct, then I saw the light at last—­and I realised that hereafter it would not be possible for me to express myself by means of colour only.

GUSTAV.  Are you quite sure now that you cannot go on painting—­ that you may not have a relapse?