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PDFIRENE.
[With a touch of jesting bitterness.] From the moment I realised that I had given away to you something rather indispensable, Arnold. Something one ought never to part with.
PROFESSOR RUBEK.
[Bowing his head.] Yes, that is bitterly true. You gave me three or four years of your youth.
IRENE.
More, more than that I gave you—spend-thrift as I then was.
PROFESSOR RUBEK.
Yes, you were prodigal, Irene. You gave me all your naked loveliness—–
IRENE.
—to gaze upon—–
PROFESSOR RUBEK.
—and to glorify—–
IRENE.
Yes, for your own glorification.—And the child’s.
PROFESSOR RUBEK.
And yours too, Irene.
IRENE.
But you have forgotten the most precious gift.
PROFESSOR RUBEK.
The most precious—? What gift was that?
IRENE.
I gave you my young, living soul. And that gift left me empty within —soulless. [Looking at him with a fixed stare.] It was that I died of, Arnold.
[The SISTER OF MERCY opens
the door wide and makes room for her.
She goes
into the pavilion.
PROFESSOR RUBEK.
[Stands and looks after her; then whispers.] Irene!
ACT SECOND.
[Near a mountain resort. The landscape stretches,
in the form of
an immense treeless upland, towards
a long mountain lake. Beyond
the lake rises a range of peaks
with blue-white snow in the clefts.
In the foreground on the left a
purling brook falls in severed
streamlets down a steep wall of
rock, and thence flows smoothly
over the upland until it disappears
to the right. Dwarf trees,
plants, and stones along the course
of the brook. In the
foreground on the right a hillock,
with a stone bench on the
top of it. It is a summer
afternoon, towards sunset.
[At some distance over the upland, on the other side
of the brook,
a troop of children is singing,
dancing, and playing. Some are
dressed in peasant costume, others
in town-made clothes. Their
happy laughter is heard, softened
by distance, during the
following.
[PROFESSOR RUBEK is sitting on the bench, with a plaid
over his
shoulders, and looking down at the
children’s play.
